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THE 


DEC  22  1917 


Great  Revival  of  1800. 


BY    THE/ 

Rev.  WILLIAM    SPEEE,  D.D. 


PHILADELPHIA  i 
PRESBYTERIAN  BOARD  OF  PUBLICATION, 

No.  1334  Chestnut  Street. 


f 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1872,  by 

THE  TRUSTEES   OF  THE 

PRESBYTERIAN  BOARD  OF   PUBLICATION, 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


Westcott   &  Thomsox, 
Stereotypers  and  Electrotypers,  Philatla. 


CONTENTS. 


■> 


CHAPTEK  I. 

PAGE 

Method  of  the  Advances  of  Christ's  Kingdom — 
Previous  Revivals., 5 


CHAPTER  II. 

Providential  Preparations  —  Civilization  —  Chas- 
tisement      10 

CHAPTER  III. 
Beginnings  of  Revival 15 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Wonderful  Communion  Scenes 24 

CHAPTER  V. 
Astonishing  Outpourings  in  the  South 38 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Great  Rains  of  Grace  in  the  Eastern  States 50 

CHAPTER  VII. 

Testimonies  as  to  the  General  Character  of  the 

Revival  of  1800 56 

3 


4  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

PAGK 

This  Revival  a  Part  of  a  World-wide  Advance  of 
the  Kingdom  of  Christ 69 

CHAPTER  IX. 

Powerful   Effects   of  the   Great  Revival  upon 
our  Church-life — Organization  of  the  Several   • 
Boards 76 

CHAPTER  X. 

The  Signs  of  a  New  Order  of  Human  Affairs 90 

CHAPTER  XI. 
The  Latter  Pentecost 96 


THE  GREAT  REVIVAL  OF  1800. 


CHAPTER    I. 

METHOD  OF  THE  ADVANCES  OF  CHRIST'S  KING- 
DOM— PREVIOUS  REVIVALS, 

[T  is  most  evident  that  the  Christian  Church  is  again  upon 
the  eve  of  one  of  those  great  impulses  in  the  growth  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth  which  we  commonly  entitle 
a  "reformation"  or  "revival." 

The  Lord  Almighty  does  not  carry  forward  the  growth 
of  that  Kingdom  by  an  even  and  gradual  expansion,  which 
would  leave  it  to  men  to  claim  the  glory  of  it.  It  advances 
like  a  river,  which  rarely  follows  far  a  right  line,  which 
may,  for  long  distances,  be  troubled  and  turbid,  but  sud- 
denly breaks  out  at  intervals  upon  its  course  into  broad, 
peaceful  expansions  or  lakes,  surrounded  by  scenes  of  ex- 
traordinary fertility  and  beauty.  It  grows  upon  a  principle 
like  that  which  the  Creator  has  impressed  upon  many 
genera  of  the  vegetable  kingdom — grasses,  canes,  trees — by 
a  succession  of  nodes,  or  axes,  or  joints;  points  where,  at 
considerable  distances  apart,  the  compressed  life  of  the 
stem  breaks  out  into  spreading  branches,  laden  with  foliage 

and  fruit.     The  Kingdom  of  God  has  thus  ever  increased 

5 


6 


THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1S00. 


by  a  succession  of  sudden  and  vigorous  expansions,  whose 
intervals  have  not  been  without  regularity  or  plan.  It  is 
one  of  those  great  expansions  of  spiritual  life  which  seems 
now  to  be  at  hand. 

From  the  earliest  history  of  the  world  these  periods  of 
revival  have  been  distinguished  by  the  visitation  of  our 
race  with  such  judgments  as  would  compel  men  to  think  of 
their  fallen,  sinful,  helpless,  perishing  condition ;  of  the  in- 
finite power  and  offended  justice  of  God ;  of  the  necessity 
of  a  propitiation  and  atonement  for  sin  in  such  ways  as  He 
might  offer ;  and  of  the  duties  of  repentance,  submission, 
obedience,  and  preparation  for  an  account  before  Him. 
They  have  been  ages  of  wars,  pestilence,  earthquakes,  sud- 
den and  vast  changes  in  social  order,  signs  or  discoveries  in 
the  heavens.  Strange  to  tell,  these  judgments  have  irri- 
tated rather  than  humbled  God's  enemies,  and  produced 
crimes  more  outrageous,  unbelief  more  determined,  and  re- 
sistance and  persecutions  of  God's  most  beloved  and  faith- 
ful messengers  and  servants. 

These  great  expansions  have  been  attended  in  the 
arrangements  of  the  Divine  Ruler  by  various  and  munificent 
gifts  of  those  agencies  of  civilization  which  would  facilitate 
the  spread  and  increase  of  the  spiritual  mercies,  and  enlarge 
the  enjoyment  and  multiply  the  benefits  of  them.  They 
have,  therefore,  been  the  world's  conspicuous  eras  of 
geographical  discovery,  of  wide- spread  commerce,  of  wealth 
in  the  precious  metals,  of  useful  inventions,  of  social  re- 
finement and  polish,  of  remunerative  researches  of  science, 
of  liberation  of  thought,  and  of  emancipation  of  oppressed 
races.  . 


ADVANCES    OF   CHKIST's    KINGDOM.  7 

The  colonization  of  this  republic  was  induced  to  a  re- 
markable extent  by  a  great  quickening  in  Europe  during 
the  seventeenth  century,  which  moved  multitudes  from  its 
diiferent  nations  and  churches  to  seek  here  opportunities 
for  greater  freedom  and  spirituality  of  faith  and  worship. 
It  was  an  age  of  vast  commercial  enterprise.  It  was  the  era 
in  Great  Britain  of  bloody  and  protracted  civil  wars,  of 
dreadful  licentiousness  and  corruption,  of  the  Great  Plague 
and  the  Great  Fire  of  London,  in  two  consecutive  years, 
16G5  and  1666.  During  it,  sounded  forth  the  seraphic 
gospel  trumpets  of  Richard  Baxter,  Philip  and  Matthew 
Henry,  John  Flavel,  Alexander  Henderson,  John  Living- 
stone and  others,  whose  preaching  was  accompanied  by 
amazing  scenes  of  spiritual  power.  Such  was  the  revival 
of  the  Kirk  of  Shotts,  in  which  under  one  sermon  five 
hundred  persons  were  subdued  to  Christ. 

The  influence  of  this  period  of  revival  was  felt  in  the 
feeble  colonies  of  America.  Since  then  there  have  been 
several  periods  specially  marked  by  general  revivals  of  re- 
ligion. The  two  which  are  the  most  distinguished  for  the 
power  with  which  the  Holy  Spirit  was  poured  out,  for  the 
distinctness  of  the  concurrent  evidences  that  the  work  was 
from  God,  and  by  the  beneficent  results  which  followed, 
were  those  of  1730  and  of  1800,  and  the  years  adjacent. 

The  first  of  these  revivals  was  known  in  the  religious 
history  of  the  century  as  "The  Great  Awakening."  It 
commenced  during  the  age  of  Queen  Anne,  "The  Augustan 
age  of  English  literature,"  and  also  that  of  Bolingbroke, 
Hobbes  and  many  of  the  bitterest  enemies  of  Christianity, 
whose  planting  bore  its  natural  fruit  in  the  general  contempt 


8  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 


for  religion  and  morality.  But  so  profound  and  so  exten- 
sive was  the  impression  communicated  to  Christianity  by 
this  quickening  from  on  high  that  one  of  our  ablest  writers 
(Isaac  Taylor:  Wesley  and  Methodism)  says:  "In  fact, 
that  great  religious  movement  has,  immediately  or  re- 
motely, so  given  an  impulse  to  Christian  feeling  and  pro- 
fession on  all  sides  that  it  has  come  to  present  itself  as  the 
starting-point  of  our  modern  religious  history." 

And  this  "religious  epoch,'  beyond  any  other  time,  was 
that  of  the  rise  of  modern  missions  to  heathen  nations. 
The  Dutch  and  Danes  and  Germans  planted  the  gospel  in 
many  Eastern  lands.  Schultz  translated  and  printed  the 
New  and  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  in  Hindustani,  and  the 
whole  Bible  and  numerous  tracts  in  the  Telinga ;  Ziegen- 
balg  and  Grundler  did  the  same  for  the  people  of  Malabar. 
King  Frederick  IV.  of  Denmark  was  thoroughly  interested 
in  the  spread  of  the  gospel  through  the  Danish  East 
Indies,  and  set  apart  large  funds  for  this  end.  The  ever- 
memorable  missions  of  the  Moravians  commenced  then. 
Christian  David  and  Matthew  and  Christian  Stack  set  out 
for  their  heroic  work  in  Greenland  amidst  the  January 
snows  at  Hernhut,  in  1733,  soon  followed  by  the  no  less 
devoted  Dober  and  Nitschman  upon  their  way  to  preach 
Christ  to  the  degraded  black  slaves  in  the  West  Indies. 
And  within  a  few  years  (1739)  Christian  Henry  Bauch 
began  to  preach  in  their  guttural  tongue  to  the  Mohegan 
Indians  in  New  York,  and  planted  the  town  of  Bethlehem, 
which  still  remains,  in  Pennsylvania.  The  English  Society 
for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge  did  much  for  India 
and  the  East.     The  Scotch  Society  for  Propagating  Chris- 


ADVANCES    OF    CHRIST^    KINGDOM.  9 

tian  Knowledge  supported  in  this  country  David  and  John 
Brainerd,  and  afterward  aided  Dr.  E.  Wheelock  in  the  In- 
dian school  which  was  the  foundation  of  Dartmouth  College. 

The  population  of  the  American  colonies  was  harassed 
at  that  time  by  wars  with  the  Indians  and  with  France. 
"  A  remarkable  succession  of  diseases  traversed  the  prov- 
inces, or,  confined  to  a  few  localities,  bore  off  the  children 
and  youth,  yet  those  years  were  not  more  remarkable 
for  unexampled  mortality  than  for  unbridled  merriment." 
Thus  God  prepared  the  way  for  that  revival  in  the  New 
World  of  which  Jonathan  Edwards,  Whitfield,  William 
and  Gilbert  Tennant,  David  Brainerd,  Samuel  Davies  and 
others  were  the  most  remarkable  instruments.  Edwards 
said  of  it :  "It  is  evident  that  it  is  a  very  great  and  won- 
derful and  exceedingly  glorious  work  of  God.  This  is  cer- 
tain, that  it  is  a  great  and  wonderful  event,  a  strange 
revolution,  an  unexpected,  surprising  overturning  of  things, 
suddenly  brought  to  pass,  such  as  has  never  been  seen  in 
New  England,  and  scarce  ever  has  been  heard  of  in  any 
land.'  It  was  estimated  that  this  work,  in  its  progress 
through  the  colonies,  brought  to  Christ  about  one  in  forty 
of  their  whole  population — a  proportion  which  would  be 
equal  to  one  million  of  the  people  at  present  within  the 
limits  of  our  countiy. 

The  second  general  revival  in  America,  which  was  the 
first  in  the  United  States  after  their  independence,  wTas 
that  which  is  recognized  as  "The  Great  Revival  of  1800." 
To  give  some  detailed  and  practical  account  of  it  is  our 
present  object.  Its  beginnings  date  from  the  closing  years 
of  the  preceding  century. 


CHAPTER    II. 

PROVIDENTIAL  PREPARA TIONS—CIVILIZA TION— 

CHASTISEMENTS. 

rPHE  period  of  the  Great  Revival  of  1800  was  a  notable 
one  in  respect  to  the  advances  of  civilization.  The  three 
voyages  of  Cook,  those  of  Bougainville,  Le  Perouse,  Kru- 
senstern,  Behring  and  others,  had  made  the  most  distant 
nations  known  to  the  people  of  Europe  and  America  as 
they  never  were  before.  In  France,  Germany,  Italy,  Eng- 
land and  the  United  States,  many  wonderful  discoveries 
were  made  in  chemistry,  electricity,  medicine,  mathe- 
matics, mechanics  and  astronomy.  It  was  the  period 
when  French  infidelity,  eagerly  accepted  over  Europe, 
fruited  in  the  crops  of  the  guillotine,  in  the  abandoned 
licentiousness  and  tiger-like  cruelty  of  the  people  of  France, 
in  the  wars  of  Napoleon,  which  were  carried  on  in  three 
continents  and  moved  the  interest  of  the  whole  world. 

This  country  was  prepared  for  a  universal  and  profound 
religious  movement  by  the  bloodshed,  trials  and  bereave- 
ments of  the  eight  years'  war  of  the  Revolution.  The  con- 
flicting interests  and  ideas  of  the  different  colonies,  even 
after  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  made  thinking  men 
feel  that  our  republican  system  was  a  new  and  perilous  ex- 

periment.     West  of  the  Allegheny  Mountains  war  with  the 
10 


PROVIDENTIAL   PREPARATIONS,  11 

the  Indian  tribes,  the  frequent  massacres  of  families  and 
burning  of  the  new  homes  and  hard-won  harvests  of  the 
adventurous  settlers,  the  demoniac  acts  of  barbarism  com- 
mitted by  renegade  white  men  living  with  but  outdoing 
the  Indians  in  such  acts,  and  the  almost  unrestrained 
prevalence  of  crime,  kept  the  inhabitants  in  a  continual 
state  of  apprehension.  A  committee  of  Congress  reported 
in  1800,  in  respect  to  the  three  States  into  which  it  was 
proposed  to  divide  the  North-west  Territory,  that  "in  the 
three  western  countries  there  has  been  but  one  court 
having  cognizance  of  crimes  in  five  years;  and  the  im- 
munity which  offenders  experience  attracts,  as  to  an 
asylum,  the  most  vile  and  abandoned  criminals,  and  at 
the  same  time  deters  useful  and  virtuous  persons  from 
making  settlements  in  such  society.  This  territory  is  ex- 
posed, as  a  frontier,  to  foreign  nations,  whose  agents  can 
find  sufficient  interest  in  exciting  or  fomenting  insurrection 
and  discontent,  as  thereby  they  can  more  easily  divert  a 
valuable  trade  in  furs  from  the  United  States." 

Religion  and  morals,  were  at  the  lowest  ebb  they  have 
ever  reached  in  this  country.  Large  numbers  of  men  re- 
leased from  the  army,  where  the  religious  influences  of  the 
day  were  feebly  exerted,  carried  home  with  them  the  vices 
they  had  contracted  and  the  infidelity  which  they  imbibed 
from  their  French  allies.  The  leading  statesmen  were  gen- 
erally the  disciples  of  the  school  of  Voltaire  and  Count  Yol- 
ney,  and  many  of  them  proficients  in  its  ribaldry  and  bawdy 
habits.  The  "Father  of  his  country"  was  a  prominent  object 
of  their  intrigues  and  reproaches.  The  soul  of  Washington 
was  never  so  near  despair  for  his  country  as  when  he  was 


12  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

then  at  times  overburdened  with  the  responsibilities  and 
fears  arising  from  such  a  state  of  things.     Intemperance 
was  universal,  and  indulged  in  to  so  terrible  a  degree  of 
license  as  would  now  seem  incredible.     Whisky  was  almost 
the  sole  production  of  extensive  new  regions.     UA  horse 
could  only  carry  four  bushels  of  rye,  but  he  could  carry  the 
whisky  made  from  twenty- four  bushels."     To   defend  it 
from  taxation  was  the  cause  of  the  Rebellion  of  1794  against 
the  Federal  authority.     "Whisky,"  said  a  distinguished 
French  officer,  "is  the  best  part  of  the  American  govern- 
ment."    Many  of  the  pulpits  of  the  country  were  filled  by 
a  formal  and  worldly  ministry,  or  by  men  who  had  fled  from 
the  ecclesiastical  censures  of  the  lands  across  the  sea.     The 
Church  was,  where  it  existed,  generally  conformed  to  the 
gay  society  about  it.     The  picture  of  portions  of  the  region 
bordering  on  the  Ohio,  by  Rev.  Dr.  Joseph  Doddridge,  was 
applicable  to  the  principal  part  of  the  West  and  South. 
He  states:   "Among  the  people  with  whom  I  was  most 
conversant  there  was  no  other  vestige  of  the  Christian  relig- 
ion than  a  faint  observation  of  Sunday,  and  that  merely  as 
a  day  of  rest  for  the  aged  and  a  play-day  for  the  young." 
-    Nor  did  God  leave  himself  without  witness  of  his  dis- 
pleasure.    Some  remarkable  chastisements  were  inflicted 
upon  the  nation.     One  of  them  was  the  yellow  fever,  which 
ravaged  extensively  the  Northern  as  well  as  the  Southern 
coasts.     Philadelphia  was  visited  five  times  by  it  between 
1793  and  1802.     Other  epidemics  spread  elsewhere,  among 
the  most  terrible  the  small-pox.    This  strange,  hideous  and 
fatal  disease  seems  in  its  history  almost  like  a  messenger  of 
wrath  sent  from  God  to  chastise  the  world  and  prepare  the 


PROVIDENTIAL    PREPARATIONS.  13 

way  for  great  reformations.  The  Sandwich  Islanders  thus 
class  it  with,  and  name  it,  "  leprosy."  It  can  be  traced 
back  in  Eastern  Asia  to  the  age  corresponding  to  that  of 
the  judges  in  Israel.  It  marched  with  Mohammedanism 
over  Asia  and  Europe — with  the  Spaniards  into  the  New 
World.  *  It  has  been  in  later  times  the  chief  of  "  the  four 
great  eruptive  diseases''  which  are  supposed  to  cause 
"one-ninth  of  the  total  mortality"  of  mankind.  [Rayer  : 
Diseases  of  the  Skin. )  At  the  close  of  the  last  century  so 
prevalent  did  it  become  that  the  deaths  from  it  as  compared 
with  those  from  all  other  diseases  increased  twenty-five  per 
cent.  Sir  Gilbert  Blaine  says  that  "in  the  year  1800  the 
small-pox  had  broken  out  twenty  times  in  the  Channel  fleet 
alone.'  But  God  mercifully  interposed:  first,  inoculation, 
which  was  brought  to  England  in  1772,  and  then  the  sov- 
ereign specific,  vaccination,  discovered  by  Dr.  Edward 
Jenner  in  1796,  set  bounds  to  its  fury. 

The  General  Assembly  in  its  pastoral  letter  of  1798 
uses  the  language  of  great  dejection,  alarm  and  expostula- 
tion in  addressing  "the  people  in  their  communion." 
They  say  "formidable  innovations  and  convulsions  in 
Europe  threaten  destruction  to  morals  and  religion  ;  scenes 
of  devastation  and  bloodshed,  unexampled  in  the  history 
of  modern  nations,  have  convulsed  the  world,  and  our 
country  is  threatened  with  similar  calamities.'  "  We  per- 
ceive, with  pain  and  fearful  apprehension,  a  general  dere- 
liction of  religious  principle  and  practice  among  our  fellow- 
citizens,  a  visible  and  prevailing  impiety  and  contempt  for 

*  It  was  estimated  that  three  and  a  half  millions  of  the  people  of 
Mexico  were  swept  off  by  this  awful  scourge. 


14  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

the  laws  and  institutions  of  religion,  and  an  abounding 
infidelity  which  in  man}7  instances  tends  to  Atheism  itself.' 
"The  profligacy  and  corruption  of  the  public  morals  have 
advanced  with  a  progress  proportioned  to  our  declension  in 
religion.  Profaneness,  pride,  luxury,  injustice,  intemper- 
ance, lewdness  and  every  species  of  debauchery  and  loose 
indulgence  greatly  abound. ' '  They  address  to  the  churches 
some  most  solemn  exhortations,  and  appoint  the  last  Thurs- 
day of  August  as  a  day  of  humiliation,  fasting  and  prayer, 
upon  which  this  letter  is  to  be  read  from  every  pulpit,  ac- 
companied with  suitable  discourses  from  the  ministers. 


CHAPTER    III. 

BEGINNINGS  OF  REVIVAL. 

TT  was  by  the  permission  of  such  general  gloom,  apostasy 
and  profligacy  that  the  Holy  Spirit  was  showing  to  the 
sincere  followers  of  God  the  evil  and  deadly  nature  of  sin, 
their  own  utter  helplessness  and  their  dependence  upon 
God  alone  for  salvation,  and  was  compelling  them  to  cry 
before  him  with  abasement  and  importunity  for  the  gifts 
of  his  grace.  And  were  prayers  ever  lifted  before  him  in 
such  abasement,  sense  of  need,  confidence  in  his  mercy  and 
reliance  on  the  all-sufficient  atonement  and  intercession  of 
Jesus  Christ,  to  which  abundant  answers  were  not  given  ? 
It  is  u  when  the  enemy  comes  in  like  a  flood,"  and  threatens 
to  overrun  and  sweep  away  all  that  is  precious,  that  "  the 
Spirit  of  the  Lord  lifts  up  a  standard,"  causes  the  trumpet 
to  be  sounded,  rallies  his  followers,  and  bestows  the  most 
sudden,  overwhelming  and  glorious  triumphs.  So  Israel  of 
old  ever  found ;  so  we  find  it  now. 

It  is  to  be  remarked  distinctly,  for  the  comfort  and  en- 
couragement of  the  portions  of  the  Church  whose  circum- 
stances are  most  trying,  that  the  scenes  which,  during  these 
darkest  3rears  of  our  country's  history,  were  visited  by 
marks  of  God's  favor  were  chiefly  amidst  the  new  settle- 
ments, where  the  greatest  hardships  and  dangers  were  ex- 

15 


16  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

perienced,  and  the  scattered  and  tried  families  of  his  fol- 
lowers most  needed,  and  most  earnestly  sought,  his  help. 
The  Great  Revival  of  1800  affected  the  whole  country,  but 
was  most  powerfully  felt  in  the  region  extending  from  the 
Allegheny  Mountains  westward  to  the  borders  of  civiliza- 
tion, and  in  the  Southern  States. 

There  were  occasional  revivals  during  the  latter  years  of 
the  Revolution,  and  subsequently  in  several  parts  of  the 
country,  but  preparatory  showers  of  the  great  rain  may  be 
most  distinctly  traced  in  a  succession  of  visitations  of  divine 
grace  upon  the  churches  of  the  new  settlements  of  Western 
Pennsylvania.  The  people  of  that  region  were  chiefly  Pres- 
byterians from  the  north  of  Ireland  and  from  Scotland. 
"They  were  (says  Dr.  E.  H.  Gillett,  in  his  History  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church)  by  no  means  the  miscellaneous  drift- 
wood which  emigration  usually  floats  off  from  older  com- 
munities to  new  settlements.  Among  them  were  men  of 
culture,  and  a  large  proportion  of  them  were  character- 
ized by  stern  religious  principle.  They  were  men  whose 
energy  and  vigor  were  developed  by  the  circumstances  of 
their  lot,  and  who,  in  grappling  with  the  forest  and  repel- 
ling or  guarding  against  savage  attacks,  were  made  more 
sagacious,  fearless  and  self-reliant'  Their  "hearts  beat 
as  true  to  the  cause  of  freedom,  intelligence,  morals  and 
religion  as  any  in  the  world." 

The  following  account  of  these  first  beginnings  of  the 
wonderful  work  of  grace  is  given  by  the  late  Rev.  Joseph 
Stevenson,  of  Ohio : 

"  It  may  almost  be  said  that  the  Presbyterian  Church  in 
Western  Pennsylvania  was  born  in  a  revival.     In  1778 


BEGINNINGS   OF    REVIVAL.  17 

Vance's  Fort,  into  which  the  families  living  adjacent  had 
been  driven  by  the  Indians,  was  the  scene  of  a  remarkable 
work.  There  was  but  one  pious  man  in  the  fort,  Joseph 
Patterson,  a  layman,  an  earnest  and  devoted  Christian, 
whose  zeal  had  not  waned  even  amid  the  storm  and  terrors 
of  war ;  and  during  the  long  days  and  nights  of  their  be- 
siegement  he  talked  with  his  carefess  associates  of  an  enemy 
more  to  be  dreaded  than  the  Indian,  and  a  death  more  ter- 
rible than  by  the  scalping-knife.  As  they  were  shut  up 
within  very  narrow  limits,  his  voice,  though  directed  to  one 
or  two,  could  easily  be  heard  by  the  whole  company,  and 
thus  his  personal  exhortations  became  public  addresses. 
Deep  seriousness  filled  every  breast,  and  some  twenty  per- 
sons were  there  led  to  Christ.  These  were  a  short  time 
subsequently  formed  into  the  Cross  Creek  church,  which 
built  its  house  of  worship  near  the  fort,  and  had  as  its 
pastor  for  thirty-three  years  one  of  these  converts,  the  Rev. 
Thomas  Marquis. 

"From  1781  to  1787  a  more  extensive  work  of  grace 
was  experienced  in  the  churches  of  Cross  Creek,  Upper 
Buffalo,  Chartiers,  Pigeon  Creek,  Bethel,  Lebanon,  Ten 
Mile,  Cross  Roads  and  Mill  Creek,  during  which  more 
than  a  tJiousand  persons  were  brought  into  the  kingdom 
of  Christ.  Considering  the  unsettled  state  of  the  public 
mind  at  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  war,  the  constant 
anxiety  and  watchfulness  against  the  incursions  of  hostile 
Indians,  the  toils  and  hardships  incident  to  new  settle- 
ments, and  the  scarcity  of  ministers,  this  was  a  signal  work 
of  the  Spirit,  greatly  strengthening  the  feeble  churches." 

A  fuller  narrative  of  these  more  limited  effusions  of  the 

2 


18  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

Holy  Spirit  was  prepared  by  a  committee  of  the  Presbytery, 
and  published  in  the  Western  Missionary  Magazine,  which 
was  begun  in  the  town  of  Washington,  Pa.,  in  1803. 

"In  the  latter  part  of  the  year  1781,  the  Lord  began  a 
gracious  work  in  the  congregations  of  Cross  Creek  and 
Upper  Buffalo,  under  the  ministry  of  the  Rev.  Joseph 
Smith,  about  one  year  after  he  took  the  pastoral  care  of 
these  congregations.  During  the  winter  season,  week-day 
and  night  sermons  and  meetings  for  social  worship  were 
frequent,  the  assemblies  numerous  and  attentive,  and  a 
considerable  number  under  deep  convictions,  with  frequent 
instances  of  new  awakenings.  The  summer  following  was 
remarkable  for  the  increase  of  the  number  of  the  awakened, 
although  most  labored  long  without  relief.  The  few  pious 
persons  who  were  in  these  infant  congregations  were  at  this 
time  earnestly  engaged  for  additions  to  their  number,  and 
felt  something  of  the  pangs  of  travailing  in  birth  for  souls ; 
much  of  the  spirit  of  prayer  was  poured  out.  In  the  latter 
part  of  this  summer  the  work  became  more  glorious  and 
comfortable  ;  numbers  of  the  distressed  souls  obtained  sweet 
deliverance  ;  and  at  the  time  the  Lord's  Supper  was  admin- 
istered in  Buffalo,  in  the  fall  of  1783,  about  one  hundred  of 
the  subjects  of  this  good  work  were  admitted  to  com- 
munion, and  many  were  awakened  on  that  solemn  occasion. 
The  awakening  and  hopeful  conversion  of  sinners  continued 
and  increased  through  three  or  four  years ;  nor  was  there 
much  appearance  of  a  decline  for  six  or  seven  years  after  it 
began. 

"Within  this  gracious  season  there  wrere  many  sweet, 
solemn  sacramental  occasions.     The  most  remarkable  of 


BEGINNINGS    OF    REVIVAL.  19 

these  was  at  Cross  Creek,  in  the  spring  of  the  year  1787. 
It  was  a  very  refreshing  season  to  the  pious,  a  time  of  de- 
liverance to  a  number  of  the  distressed  and  of  awakening 
to  many.     The  Monday  evening  was  peculiarly  and  awfully 
solemn ;    some   hundreds  were   bowed   down   and  silently 
weeping,  and  a  few  crying  out  in  anguish  of  soul.     After 
the  solemn  dismission  of  the  assembly  most  of  the  people 
remained  on  the  ground  ;  the  scene  was  very  remarkable  ; 
the  pious  were  generally  joyful  and  lively,  sinners  greatly 
alarmed,  and  many  deeply  distressed.     The  people,  unwill- 
ing to  part,  did  not  leave  the  place  till  an  hour  or  more  in 
the  night,  when  they  parted  with  an  appointment  to  meet 
there  again  the  next  morning.     Tuesday  was  indeed  a  sol- 
emn day ;  it  was  spent  chiefly  in  exhortations  and  prayers 
by   the   Rev.    Messrs.    Smith,   Dod  and  Corn  well.      The 
effects  of  this  gracious  visitation  were  very  comfortable, 
producing  a  good  harvest  of  souls.    Upward  of  fifty  in  these 
congregations  were  added  to  the  church  at  the  communion 
the  next  fall. 

"Nearly  about  the  same  time  in  which  this  gracious 
work  began  in  these  congregations,  the  divine  influences 
were  also  poured  out  upon  the  congregations  of  Chartiers 
and  Pigeon  Creek,  under  the  ministry  of  the  Rev.  John 
McMillan ;  many  were  awakened,  and  the  pious  much  re- 
vived and  quickened.  There  were  a  goodly  number  of 
judicious  Christians  in  these  congregations  who  actively 
stepped  forward  in  their  proper  places,  and  were  very  help- 
ful in  carrying  on  the  good  work.  As  many  attended  from 
considerable  distances,  with  a  great  thirst  for  ordinances,  it 
was  thought  expedient  to  have  social  meetings  for  prayer 


20  THE   GREAT    REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

and  exhortation  on  the  Sabbath  nights  ;  they  generally  con- 
tinued all  the  night ;  many  attended,  and  conviction  and 
conversion  work  went  graciously  on.  Frequently  the  ex- 
ercised could  not  suppress  their  feelings  of  joy  or  distress, 
but  gave  them  vent  in  groans  and  cries.  There  were  also 
frequently  week-day  and  night  sermons  and  societies  in  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  congregations.  Thus  this  good  work 
went  on  for  several  years,  and  it  is  believed  that  many  were 
brought  savingly  to  close  with  Christ  in  these  congrega- 
tions ;  and  it  is  evident,  from  a  trial  of  near  twenty  years, 
that  the  work  is  real  and  genuine  with  respect  to  some 
hundreds  in  those  two  charges  above  stated,  many  of  whom 
are  now  faithful  leaders,  zealous  and  active  Christians  and 
pillars  in  the  church  of  Christ. 

11  In  the  same  time  whilst  this  gracious  work  was  going 
on  in  those  places,  the  Lord  also  poured  out  his  Spirit 
on  several  other  neighboring  congregations,  particularly 
Bethel  and  Lebanon,  under  the  ministry  of  the  Rev.  John 
Clarke ;  Ten  Mile,  under  the  ministry  of  the  Rev.  Thad- 
deus  Dod;  and  King's  Creek  and  Mill  Creek,  then  vacant 
congregations.  In  all  of  these  places  the  power  of  God 
was  graciously  displayed,  and  many  souls  gathered  in  who 
have  since  given  evidence  in  their  lives  and  conversation 
that  the  work  with  them  was  a  reality  and  of  divine  original. 

"  We  are  able  to  state,  from  particular  acquaintance  and 
frequent  conversation  with  some  hundreds  of  those  who 
were  exercised  during  this  happy  season  of  gracious  visita- 
tion in  all  the  above  places,  that  in  general  their  distress 
arose  from  a  deep  sense  of  the  contrariety  of  their  hearts 
and  lives  to  the  law  of  God,  and  the  awful  wages  of  sin, 


BEGINNINGS   OF   REVIVAL.  21 

which  they  saw  they  were  in  imminent  danger  of  receiving, 
of  their  utter  indisposition  to  turn  to  God,  to  love  his  law, 
or  embrace  Jesus  Christ,  by  reason  of  the  hardness  of  their 
hearts,  blindness  of  their  minds  and  enmity  against  God. 
The  peace  and  consolations  of  those  who  obtained  relief 
did  not  arise  from  a  view  of  either  their  hearts  or  lives 
being  less  offensive  to  God,  or  from  their  having  done  any 
thing  recommending  or  entitling  them  to  the  divine  notice 
or  favor,  nor  merely  from  a  persuasion  of  God's  having 
pardoned  their  sins,  but  from  a  scriptural  discovery  of  the 
plan  of  salvation  by  free,  sovereign  grace,  through  the 
obedience,  sufferings  and  death  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  God- 
man,  which  they  viewed  suitable  to  their  perishing  con- 
dition, and  to  every  valuable  purpose ;  and  they  found 
their  wills  gained  over  to  the  cordial  choice  of  this  plan, 
and  that  their  souls  became  delighted  with  the  character 
and  holy  law  of  God. 

"In  the  year  1795  there  was  a  gracious  shower  of  the 
divine  influence  in  the  congregation  of  Chartiers,  which 
occasioned  a  considerable  reviving  and  ingathering  of  souls. 
In  this  visitation  the  Academy  at  Canonsburg  shared 
largely.     About  forty-five  were  added  to  the  Church. 

"In  the  year  1799  refreshing  showers  of  divine  influ- 
ence were  poured  on  many  congregations  in  the  bounds  of 
our  Presbytery,  in  which  several  hundreds  were  added  to 
the  Church. 

"  Those  congregations  which  had  pastors  very  generally 
shared  in  this  gracious  visit,  and  also  some  that  were 
vacant  were  refreshed  and  strengthened. 

In  each  of  the  above  mentioned  seasons  of  gracious  vis- 


u 


22  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

itation,  and  in  the  several  places  mentioned,  numbers  dis- 
countenanced and  opposed  the  good  work ;  but  very  few 
publicly,  or  with  such  weight  as  to  occasion  any  consider- 
able disturbance  or  difficulty. 

"  This  work  throughout  was  generally  carried  on  in  the 
more  ordinary  or  mild  and  moderate  manner.  Although 
convictions  were  deep  and  pungent,  the  sense  of  sin,  guilt 
and  danger  very  affecting,  and  the  apprehensions  of  divine 
wrath  distressing,  yet  they  were  nob  attended  with  any 
extraordinary  bodily  affections,  but  in  few,  if  any,  instances. 
The  work  was  also  remarkably  free  from  enthusiasm,  wild 
imaginations,  and  disorderly,  hurtful  irregularities.  Al- 
though there  have  been  some  instances  of  apostasy,  yet  it 
must  be  remarked,  to  the  praise  of  free  grace,  that  these 
have  been  but  few  amongst  those  respecting  whom  their 
pious  friends  and  the  officers  of  the  Church  entertained  a 
favorable  opinion  that  they  had  been  the  subjects  of 
saving  grace,  and  who  were  admitted  to  the  communion  of 
the  Church. 

"  In  the  interims  of  the  gracious  visitations  which  have 
been  noticed  there  were  some  sad  degrees  of  declension ; 
perhaps  more  especially  and  generally  after  the  last  men- 
tioned season,  in  1799,  when  the  graceless  became  more 
bold  in  sin  and  impiety,  the  floods  of  vanity  and  carnality 
appeared  likely  to  carry  all  before  them ;  most  of  the  pious 
became  very  weak  and  feeble  in  the  cause  of  Christ,  much 
buried  in  and  carried  away  with  the  things  and  pursuits 
of  the  world,  and  in  some  places  a  spirit  of  contention  and 
animosity  crept  in,  which  appeared  to  lead  into  a  great 
degree  of  contempt  of  ordinances  and  government  in  the 


BEGINNINGS    OF    REVIVAL.  23 

church  and  in  families.  Here,  however,  we  are  again  called 
to  remark,  to  the  praise  of  free  grace,  that  God  still  so  kept 
his  hand  about  his  Church,  his  cause  and  his  people  that 
those  means  and  ordinances  which  God  had  peculiarly 
countenanced  and  'made  effectual  in  his  work  were  still 
generall}'  maintained.  The  ministers  in  general  were  en- 
abled faithfully  to  declare  the  counsel  of  God,  and  in  plain- 
ness, with  honesty  and  simplicity,  to  hold  forth  the  doc- 
trines of  grace,  and  there  was  generally  considerable  so- 
lemnity in  the  time  of  dispensing  the  word  and  ordinances, 
but  the  effects  appeared  not  to  be  abiding,  save  with  a  few. 
Meetings  for  social  worship,  which  the  Lord  very  specially 
owned  and  blessed  in  the  times  of  reviving,  were,  in  the 
darkest  times,  in  most  places  kept  up,  though  not  so  fre- 
quent nor  so  generally  attended.  The  meeting  for  concert 
prayer  for  the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit  of  revival  of  relig- 
ion, on  the  first  Tuesday  in  every  quarter  of  the  year,  was 
cordially  entered  into  by  the  Ohio  Presbytery,  and  practiced 
generally  throughout  their  bounds  since  the  beginning  of 
the  year  1796.  Thus  there  was,  for  the  most  part,  some  at- 
tention to  the  means  kept  up,  though,  alas !  too  generally 
they  appeared  as  barren  ordinances." 


CHAPTER    IV. 

WONDERFUL    COMMUNION  SCENES. 

rpHE  committee  of  Presbytery,  in  the  Magazine  pre- 
viously mentioned,  describes  some  scenes  at  commu- 
nions of  the  churches  in  Washington  County,  Pennsylvania, 
which  seemed  like  a  renewal  of  the  Day  of  Pentecost,  and 
have  rarely  had  a  parallel  in  any  subsequent  age. 

"About  the  latter  end  of  the  year  1801,  and  beginning 
of  1802,  there  was  a  remarkable  attendance  upon  ordi- 
nances ;  meetings  for  the  worship  of  God,  both  public  and 
social,  were  generally  crowded,  and  there  appeared  an  in- 
creasing attention  to  the  word  and  great  solemnity  in  the 
assemblies.  The  people  of  God  became  more  sensible  of 
and  affected  with  the  low  state  of  religion,  and  the  danger- 
ous, perishing  condition  of  sinners.  It  appeared  that  God 
made  use  of  the  intelligence  we  had  of  the  revival  of  relig- 
ion in  other  places  to  excite  a  longing  and  praying  for  the 
Lord's  returning  with  power  to  our  languishing  churches, 
that  we  might  experience  the  displays  of  his  power  and 
grace  which  he  was  making  in  other  parts.  Desire  and 
prayer  for  this  great  favor  increased  through  the  following 
winter  in  many  of  our  congregations,  and  in  the  spring 
and  first  part  of  the  summer  of  1802  there  was  a  consid- 
erable rising  of  expectation  that  the  Lord  would  not  alto- 
24 


WONDERFUL   COMMUNION    SCENES.  25 

gether  forsake  or  pass  us  by,  but  that  he  would  yet  favor 
us  with  a  gracious  visitation ;  and  indeed  we  were  blest 
with  some  tokens  of  his  presence  in  his  ordinances.  Xot 
only  the  children  of  God  were  more  quickened  and  aroused, 
but  also  in  many  instances  there  appeared  to  be  an  alarm 
and  some  concern  amongst  unregenerate  sinners.  These 
appearances  were  considerably  increased  at  the  time  of  the 
sacramental  seasons,  more  especially  perhaps  at  Cross 
Creek  and  Lower  Buffalo  toward  the  last  of  June.  On 
both  of  these  occasions  the  children  of  God  were  much 
quickened  and  revived,  numbers  of  sinners  brought  under 
serious  concern,  and  some  hopefully  led  to  rest  on  Christ. 
On  the  Monday  in  particular  at  Lower  Buffalo  there  was 
evidence  of  the  presence  and  power  of  God.  It  was  difficult 
to  part  after  two  discourses  were  delivered.  The  preach- 
ing appeared  to  come  home  to  the  heart  with  power,  and 
singing  a  parting  hymn  at  the  conclusion  greatly  affected 
many.  The  pious  appeared  to  go  away  from  this  place  with 
lively  expectations  that  the  time  to  favor  this  part  of  our 
Zion  was  drawing  near.  From  this  time  it  appeared  that 
almost  every  meeting,  sermon  or  society,  through  the 
divine  blessing,  produced  new  effects,  particularly  leading 
to  the  work  of  examination  and  inquiry  into  the  grounds 
of  controversy  which  prevented  the  gracious  visitation  of 
the  Lord,  and  exciting  to  more  earnest  wrestling  and 
pleading  with  God  for  the  effusion  of  his  Spirit  and  dis- 
play of  his  power  and  grace ;  and  it  was  evident  that  for 
this  purpose  a  spirit  of  prayer  and  supplication  was  given 
to  many.  Thus  it  appears  that  the  Lord  was,  through  the 
summer,  preparing  his  way  for  his  coming  to  this  part  of 


26  THE   GKEAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

his  church,  to  make  those  displays  of  his  power  and  grace 
which  we  have  since  witnessed  and  experienced. 

"  In  the  month  of  September,  1802,  the  Lord  began  in  a 
glorious  manner  to  show  his  stately  steppings  in  the  sanc- 
tuaries of  his  grace.  At  several  sacramental  occasions  in 
that  month  there  were  considerable  evidences  of  the  gra- 
cious presence  of  God,  and  of  the  operations  of  his  Holy 
Spirit.  But  the  first  extraordinary  manifestations  of  the 
Divine  power  were  made  in  the  congregation  of  the  Three 
Springs,  part  of  the  charge  of  the  Rev.  Elisha  Macurdy, 
at  the  time  of  the  administration  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  on 
the  fourth  Sabbath  of  September,  1802.  For  some  weeks 
before,  there  had  been  in  this  congregation  more  appear- 
ance of  solemnity  and  serious  exercise  than  usual.  There 
had  been  also,  among  the  pious  in  both  congregations,  for 
some  time,  an  uncommon  engagedness  in  pleading  for  the 
divine  presence  on  that  occasion.  It  is  thought  not  im- 
proper to  mention,  for  the  encouragement  of  others  in 
future,  that  an  agreement  was  made  and  attended  to  by 
them  to  spend  a  certain  time,  about  sun-setting,  on  each 
Thursday,  in  secret  prayer,  each  by  themselves,  to  plead 
with  God  for  his  gracious  presence  and  the  outpouring  of 
his  Spirit  on  that  occasion.  This  was  done  for  some  weeks 
before  the  Sacrament.  On  the  Sabbath  immediately  pre- 
ceding the  communion  there  was  considerable  evidence  of 
the  powerful  presence  of  God,  particularly  toward  the  close 
of  the  afternoon  sermon.  When  the  congregation  was  dis- 
missed, about  fifty  persons  continued  upon  the  ground,  ap- 
peared unwilling  to  go  away,  and  spent  the  most  of  the 
night  in  social  worship. 


WONDERFUL    COMMUNION   SCENES.  27 

"  On  Thursday  following,  which  was  observed  as  a  fast  in 
preparation  for  the  Lord's  Supper,  the  impressions  still  in- 
creased. Society  was  appointed  in  the  evening ;  a  consid- 
erable number  attended,  and  before  worship  began  two 
young  persons,  who  had  retired  to  the  woods  to  pray,  fell 
to  the  ground,  unable  to  bear  up  any  longer  under  the  dis- 
tressing anguish  of  a  wounded  spirit.  Their  cries  for 
mercy  were  very  affecting.  After  some  time  two  persons 
went  to  them  and  inquired  the  cause  of  their  distress.  Their 
reply  was,  that  they  wrere  exposed  to  the  wrath  of  God. 
When  Christ  was  proposed  to  them  as  a  remedy,  their  re- 
ply was,  that  their  hearts  were  at  enmity  against  God,  and 
they  could  not  accept  of  him,  although  they  were  sure  they 
would  be  damned  without  an  interest  in  him ;  besides,  they 
had  so  long  rejected  salvation,  they  were  now  afraid  God 
would  not  have  mercy  on  them.  Most  of  the  time  from 
that  until  Saturday  at  one  o'clock  was  spent  in  conversing 
with  the  distressed.  Their  general  complaint  was  a  sense 
of  guilt,  especially  in  rejecting  Christ ;  hardness  of  heart 
and  inability  to  help  themselves ;  and  all  acknowledged  the 
justice  of  God  in  their  condemnation.  As  yet  there  were 
no  instances  of  deliverance. 

"  Saturday  was  a  time  of  gracious  influences ;  many  more 
were  brought  under  concern.  Most  of  that  night  was  spent 
in  social  worship,  and  the  work  remarkably  increased  until 
Monday  morning.  When  the  congregation  was  dismissed, 
some  hundreds  remained ;  several  attempts  were  made  to 
part,  but  all  in  vain.  They  remained  all  night  on  the 
ground ;  and  this  night  far  exceeded  any  that  had  been  be- 
fore.   About  the  break  of  day  on  Tuesday  morning  there 


28  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

were  six  persons  who  gave  evidence  of  obtaining  hope  in 
Jesus.  About  eleven  o'clock  the  assembly  dispersed.  On 
the  Thursday  following  the  people  of  the  Cross  Road  con- 
gregation, the  other  part  of  Mr.  Macurdy's  charge,  met  for 
social  worship,  it  being  their  monthly  society  day.  This 
was  also  a  time  of  God's  power.  There  were  many  in- 
stances of  new  awakening.  They  continued  all  the  night 
in  religious  exercises. ' 

"  On  Tuesday,  the  5th  of  October,  1802,  the  day  of  con- 
certed prayer,  the  Lord  appeared,  by  the  powerful  operation 
of  the  Spirit,  in  the  congregation  of  Cross  Creek,  the  charge 
of  the  Rev.  Thomas  Marquis.  The  people  were  solemn 
and  attentive  through  the  day,  and  in  the  evening,  when 
dismissed,  they  appeared  backward  to  go  away.  After 
part  were  gone  and  many  standing  about  the  doors,  one 
of  the  elders  who  was  in  the  house  went  to  the  door  and 
spoke  a  few  words  respecting  their  situation,  and  in  a  few 
minutes  the  young  people  were  all  in  tears.  They  then 
joined  in  singing  a  hymn  and  in  prayer.  By  this  time  some 
of  those  who  had  gone  away  returned.  They  went  all  again 
into  the  house,  candles  were  brought,  and  the  night  was 
spent  in  prayer,  conversation  and  praise,  until  two  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  During  this  time  many  cried  out  in  the 
anguish  of  their  souls,  bitterly  lamenting  their  misimprove- 
ment  of  time  and  abuse  of  mercies.  They,  in  a  very  moving 
manner,  expressed  their  sense  of  sin  and  guilt,  the  hardness 
of  their  hearts  and  the  justice  of  God  in  passing  them  by 
neglected  in  this  their  deep  distress ;  they  freely  acknow- 
ledged their  bitter  malice  and  violent  opposition  which  they 
had  felt  and  indulged  in  their  hearts  against  God's  work 


WONDERFUL    COMMUNION    SCENES.  29 

and  people.  Some  confessed  that  they  had  come  in  the 
most  contemptuous  manner  to  the  house  of  God  that  day, 
with  a  professed  intention  to  get  the  people  of  God  to  pray 
for  them  ;  but  were  then  astonished  that  God  had  not 
made  them  monuments  of  his  divine  vengeance,  upon  ac- 
count of  their  rejecting  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  other 
heaven-daring  wickedness. 

"The  next  day  there  was  a  meeting  on  the  outline  of  the 
congregation,  adjoining  Mr.  Macurdy's  congregation.  The 
people  were  silent  in  the  time  of  divine  service,  with  a  few 
exceptions ;  but  when  the  congregation  was  dismissed  the 
effects  of  God's  power  more  visibly  appeared.  Many  then 
cried  out  in  great  agony  of  soul ;  many  more  expressed  their 
concern  by  a  desire  of  social  worship  that  night,  in  which 
they  were  gratified.  The  house,  though  of  a  middle  size, 
was  not  sufficient  to  contain  the  people,  on  which  account 
many  went  away  after  a  short  sermon.  The  exercises  of 
prayer  and  praise,  with  frequent  exhortations,  continued  the 
whole  night,  except  two  short  intervals  spent  in  conversa- 
tion with  the  distressed.  This  was  a  very  solemn  season  ; 
the  people  were  almost  universally  bowed,  while  some  ap- 
peared to  be  upon  the  brink  of  despair.  Some  few  obtained 
relief  before  day,  who  have  since  given  evidence  of  serious 
and  comfortable  exercise.  A  goodly  number  who  since 
that  time  have  been  admitted  to  the  table  of  the  Lord 
have  dated  their  first  deep  and  abiding  convictions  from 
that  season.  It  was  a  night  to  be  had  in  everlasting  re- 
membrance, for  which  it  is  hoped  many  will  praise  God 
eternall}T.     At  this  time  some  began  to  speak  the  language 


30  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

of  Canaan  with  solemn  sweet  serenity  of  mind,  and  in 
heavenly  heart-affecting  accents. 

"  On  the  Sabbath  following,  which  was  the  10th  day  of 
October,  1802,  the  Lord's  Supper  was  administered  at 
Racoon  congregation,  the  charge  of  the  Rev.  Joseph  Pat- 
terson. As  many  as  the  house  could  contain  attended  to 
social  worship  and  preaching  throughout  the  night.  Divine 
worship  was  also  carried  on  a  considerable  part  of  the  night 
at  the  tent ;  many  new  awakenings  took  place  through  the 
night,  and  the  social  exercises  continued  until  the  public 
worship  began  on  Monday.  Through  this  day  many  more 
were  made  to  cry  out  in  agony  of  soul,  unable  to  sit  or 
stand ;  some  of  them,  very  notorious  in  vanity  and  pro- 
fanity, were  struck  to  the  ground  and  constrained  to  cry  out 
aloud  in  bitter  anguish  of  soul,  '  Undone  !  undone  !  for  ever 
undone  !'  Some  who  were  considerably  advanced  in  years 
were  in  this  situation,  as  well  as  many  younger,  who  were 
crying  for  mercy,  some  of  whom  had  been  ring-leaders  in 
wickedness  and  impiety,  conducting  with  the  greatest  inso- 
lence and  contempt.  Toward  evening  the  exercise  was  par- 
ticularly solemn  and  powerful ;  several  persons  of  Racoon 
congregation  were  at  this  time  awakened ;  few  or  none  of 
this  congregation  had  appeared  to  be  awakened  before. 

"The  last  Sabbath  in  October  the  Lord's  Supper  was 
administered  at  Cross  Roads.  A  great  multitude  of  people 
collected  ;  many  from  a  great  distance,  accommodated  AYith 
provisions  to  continue  on  the  ground  during  the  whole  of 
the  solemnity.  There  were  thirty-two  wagons.  On  Sab- 
bath day  and  night  there  was  much  rain  and  snow ;  yet  the 
people  mostly  continued  at  the  place  night  and  day  until 


WONDERFUL    COMMUNION    SCENES.  31 

Tuesday  morning.  Nine  ministers  attended.  The  meet- 
ing-house, though  large,  being  insufficient  to  contain  half 
the  people,  the  Sacrament  was  administered  at  the  tent 
to  about  eight  hundred  communicants — of  whom  forty-one 
were  then  admitted  for  the  first  time — of  the  Cross  Iloads 
and  Three  Springs  congregations.  Though  there  was  a 
continual  fall  of  rain  this  large  assembly  attended  with 
undisturbed  composure.  In  order  to  accommodate  the 
multitude  two  action  sermons  were  preached.  The  com- 
municants then  removed  to  the  communion  table  at  the 
tent.  A  great  many  were  affected,  and  some  had  to  be 
assisted  to  move  out. 

"Ministers  still  preached  successively  in  the  house 
throughout  the  day.  Prayers  and  exhortations  were  con- 
tinued all  night  in  the  meeting-house,  except  at  short 
intervals,  when  a  speaker's  voice  could  not  be  heard  for 
the  cries  and  groans  of  the  distressed. 

"  On  Monday  three  ministers  preached  at  different  places, 
one  in  the  house  and  two  out  in  the  encampments.  This 
was  a  very  solemn  day,  particularly  in  the  house.  After 
public  worship  was  concluded  and  the  people  were  prepar- 
ing to  remove,  the  scene  was  very  affecting.  The  house  was 
thronged  full,  and  when  some  of  those  without  were  about 
to  go  away,  they  found  that  part  of  their  families  were  in 
the  house,  and  some  of  them  lying  in  distress,  unable  to 
remove.  This  prevented  a  general  removal ;  and  though  a 
number  went  away,  the  greater  part  remained.  About  the 
time  of  the  departure  of  those  who  went  away,  the  work 
became  more  powerful  than  it  had  been  at  any  time  before, 
and  numbers  who  had  prepared  to  go  were  constrained  to 


32  THE    GREAT    REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

stay.  It  was  a  memorable  time  of  the  displays  of  Divine 
power  and  grace  through  the  whole  night.  Many  of  the 
young  people  were  remarkably  exercised,  and  frequently 
addressed  others  about  the  perishing  condition  they  were 
in — the  glories  of  the  Saviour — the  excellency  and  suitable- 
ness of  the  plan  of  salvation — and  warned,  invited  and 
pressed  sinners  to  come  to  Christ ;  all  this  in  a  manner 
quite  astonishing  for  their  years.  Numbers  of  old  experi- 
enced Christians  also  were  particularly  exercised,  were 
much  refreshed  and  comforted,  and  afFectingly  recom- 
mended the  Lord  Jesus  and  his  religion  to  those  around 
them.  About  sunrise,  after  a  time  of  solemn,  sweet 
exercise,  the  congregation  was  dismissed,  and  soon  after 
dispersed. 

"  Shortly  before  this  sacramental  season,  numbers  of  the 
exercised  in  Cross  Creek  and  other  congregations  obtained 
some  relief  to  their  troubled  minds.  Opportunities  were 
taken  to  converse  with  them,  and  a  number  were  found  to 
have  gotten  ease  and  obtained  hopes  which  did  not  appear 
to  be  well  founded.  This  excited  some  alarm  among  the 
pious  and  discerning,  and  gave  occasion  to  make  the  most 
careful  discrimination  between  conviction  and  conversion — 
a  true  and  a  false  peace — when  treating  the  subject  of  soul 
exercise,  both  in  public  administration  and  private  con- 
versation, and  to  guard  against  error,  delusion  and  en- 
thusiasm. And  here  we  must  acknowledge,  to  the  glory  of 
sovereign  grace,  that  God  owned  and  blessed  feeble  at- 
tempts of  this  kind  to  rectify  the  mistakes  of  poor  young 
sinners  caught  in  Satan's  net.  In  some  instances  three 
or  four  persons  have  on  Sabbath  evenings  and  other  occa- 


WONDERFUL   COMMUNION   SCENES.  33 

sions  acknowledged  their  deceptions,  and  blessed  God  for 
discovering  to  them  their  error ;  and  their  convictions 
returned  and  became  more  rational,  deep  and  abiding, 
and  their  exercises  more  scriptural. 

"  The  gracious  manifestations  which  the  Lord  made  of 
his  presence  on  this  precious  season  at  the  Cross  Roads, 
and  his  countenancing  the  appointment  by  awakening 
many  who  came  from  distant  congregations,  induced  the 
making  of  an  appointment  for  the  administration  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  again,  at  Upper  Buffalo,  on  the  second  Sab- 
bath of  November. 

'  In  the  interim  the  work  considerably  increased  where 
it  had  been,  and  began  in  other  places  on  the  return  of 
those  who  had  been  to  the  Cross  Roads,  of  whom  many 
had  been  made  the  subjects  of  the  work  while  there.  The 
sweet  savor  and  the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  continued 
with  them  when  they  returned  home,  and  they  were  made 
the  happy  instruments  of  awakening  and  engaging  others 
in  the  congregations  where  they  dwelt. 

"On  Saturday,  the  13th  day  of  November,  1802,  a 
greater  concourse  of  people  than  had  ever  been  seen  before 
at  a  meeting  for  divine  worship  in  this  country  assembled 
at  Upper  Buffalo  meeting-house,  in  the  congregation  of 
the  Rev.  John  Anderson,  and  formed  an  encampment  in  a 
semi-circle  around  the  front  of  the  tent,  in  a  shady  wood. 
The  greater  part  had  by  this  time  learned  from  experience 
the  necessity  of  coming  prepared  to  encamp  on  the  ground 
during  the  solemnity,  as  so  many  persons  in  distress  could 
not  be  removed  to  lodgings  in  the  evening ;  nor  could  such 
a  multitude  be  accommodated   in  a  neighborhood  of  the 


34  THE    GREAT    REVIVAL    OF    1800. 

most  hospitable  inhabitants,  taking  all  home  to  lodgings. 
On  this  occasion  it  would  have  required  one  hundred 
houses,  with  perhaps  one  hundred  persons  to  each  house. 
But  the  people  had  been  so  engaged  that  they  were  not 
disposed  to  separate  in  the  evenings;  therefore  many 
brought  wagons  (about  fifty  of  them)  with  their  families 
and  provisions,  with  a  great  number  of  tents,  which  they 
pitched  for  their  accommodation.  The  public  exercises  of 
devotion  commenced  at  two  o'clock,  with  sermons  both  in 
the  meeting-house  and  at  the  tent,  and  were  continued, 
with  but  short  intermissions,  until  Tuesday  evening.  Fif- 
teen ministers  were  present,  all  members  of  the  Synod 
of  Pittsburg,  and  with  cordial  harmony  took  part  in  the 
various  labors  of  the  solemn  season.  The  administration 
of  the  word  and  ordinances  was  accompanied  with  an  ex- 
traordinary effusion  of  Divine  influence  on  the  hearts  of  the 
hearers.  Some  hundreds  were,  during  the  season,  con- 
victed of  their  sin  and  misery.  Preaching,  exhortations, 
prayers  and  praises,  were  continued  alternately  throughout 
the  whole  night  in  the  meeting-house,  which  was  crowded 
full,  and  also  part  of  the  night  at  the  tent. 

"  On  the  Sabbath  morning,  action  sermons  were  preached 
in  the  meeting-house  and  at  the  tent;  and  after  the  way 
was  prepared  at  both  places,  the  communicants  from  the 
house  repaired  to  the  communion  table  at  the  tent,  where 
the  holy  ordinance  was  administered  to  about  nine  hundred 
and  sixty  communicants.  The  solemn  scene  was  conducted 
with  as  much  regularity  as  usual,  and  with  much  solemniry 
and  affection.  The  multitude  of  non-communicants  who 
pould  not  hear  at  the  tent  wore  called  to  the  meeting-house 


WONDERFUL   COMMUNION   SCENES.  35 

and  to  a  shady  grove,  where  they  were  addressed  by  several 
ministers  during  the  administration  of  the  ordinance. 

"This  night  was  spent  as  the  former  had  been  ;  perhaps 
the  only  difference  that  appeared  was  in  the  numbers  who 
were  visibly  pierced  to  the  heart,  and  made  to  cry  out,  What 
shall  we  do  f  and  in  the  degree  of  their  exercise,  both  of 
which  greatly  exceeded  those  of  the  preceding  night. 

"Between  midnight  and  day-break,  after  a  short  inter- 
mission of  public  worship,  an  exhortation  was  given  to  the 
distressed,  directing  them  to  Christ,  and  setting  forth  the 
fullness  of  his  grace  and  suitableness  to  all  their  wants. 

"On  Monday  the  whole  assembly  was  addressed  by  one 
speaker  from  the  tent.  They  were  composed,  solemn  and 
attentive  during  the  time  of  public  worship  ;  but  after  the 
blessing  was  pronounced,  many  were  struck  down  in  all 
parts  of  the  congregation,  and  many  more  sat  still,  silently 
weeping  over  their  miserable  state  as  sinners  exposed  to 
eternal  wrath.  Many  of  God's  dear  children  were  filled 
with  peace  in  believing.  They  saw  the  spiritual  glory 
which  the  gracious  presence  of  God  had  given  to  the 
solemnity ;  they  rejoiced  in  hope,  and  waited  to  see  and 
feel  more  of  the  efficacy  of  free  grace.  Others,  sorrowful 
and  thirsting  for  the  water  of  life,  wished  to  stay  a  little 
longer  at  the  pool.  The  ministers,  therefore,  determined 
not  to  leave  them,  but  to  labor  with  diligence  while  God 
was  making  the  word  and  ordinances  effectual  to  the  con- 
viction and  conversion  of  sinners.  Not  a  few  were  awak- 
ened to  a  lively  sense  of  their  sin  during  the  evening  and 
night,  who  have  since,  we  hope,  obtained  pardon  and 
peace  with  God  through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.     The  ex- 


36  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

ercises  were  continued  until  after  sunrise  on  Tuesday 
morning,  when  the  assembly  was  solemnly  dismissed,  and 
began  with  apparent  reluctance  to  prepare  to  disperse. 
Notwithstanding  that  they  had  continued  so  long  and 
rested  little,  it  appeared  to  be  very  difficult  to  separate  and 
leave  the  place.  After  some  time  the  most  removed, 
except  the  people  of  the  congregation,  who  still  tarried, 
lingering  at  the  place  where  so  much  of  God's  power  had 
been  manifested  to  their  eyes  and  in  their  consciences. 
Numbers,  who  had  gone  home  to  provide  refreshments  for 
their  friends,  returned.  Still  they  could  not  part.  All 
again  collected  in  the  meeting-house,  where  this  day  also 
was  spent  till  evening  in  preaching,  exhortation  and  prayer. 
The  exercise  was  very  powerful,  and  numbers  were  affected 
who  appeared  to  be  unmoved  before. ' 

One  of  the  most  powerful  sermons  on  this  Pentecostal 
occasion  was  an  exposition  of  the  second  Psalm,  by  Rev. 
Elisha  Macurdy,  which  was  long  known  in  the  region 
round  as  "Macurdy 's  war  sermon."  "The  scene,"  said 
Rev.  Thomas  Hunt,  who  was  in  the  wagon  from  which  it 
was  preached,  "appeared  to  me  like  the  close  of  a  battle 
in  which  every  tenth  man  had  been  fatally  wounded.  The 
recollection  thrills  through  my  soul  while  I  write.'  (Rev. 
Dr.  D.  Elliott :  Life  of  Macurdy. ) 

The  churches  from  Lake  Erie  southward  along  the 
western  side  of  the  Allegheny  Mountains,  and  through  the 
few  settled  portions  of  the  North-west  Territory,  which 
about  this  time  were  formed  into  the  State  of  Ohio,  felt  the 
swelling  of  the  river  of  the  water  of  life.  The  first  Presby- 
terian Church  formed  in  Eastern  Ohio  was  blessed,  accord- 


WONDERFUL   COMMUNION   SCENES.  37 

ing  to  this  narrative  of  the  Presbytery  of  Ohio,  with  a  share 
of  the  refreshing  influences.  It  says:  "In  the  latter  end 
of  the  year  1798  the  Lord  poured  out  his  Spirit  on  a  new 
settlement,  on  the  north-west  of  the  Ohio  river,  between 
the  Great  and  the  Little  Beavers,  since  formed  into  two 
congregations  under  the  pastoral  care  of  the  Rev.  Thomas 
E.  Hughes,  under  whose  first  ministrations  amongst  them 
this  good  work  began.  The  operations  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
in  this  place  were  very  powerful,  and  in  many  instances 
hopefully  successful.  In  a  short  space  of  time  a  consider- 
able number,  we  trust,  were  made  the  subjects  of  a  saving 
work  of  grace.  In  this  work  an  English  school  in  that 
place  shared  very  graciously.  The  youth  or  children  who 
attended  it  were  generally  exercised  for  a  considerable 
time,  so  much  so  that  all  play  and  diversions  were  stopped, 
and  the  intervals  were  spent  in  reading,  conversing  about 
their  souls'  concerns,  singing  hymns  or  retiring  into  the 
woods  to  pray.  It  is  believed  that  eighteen  out  of  thirty 
in  this  school  were  made  the  subjects  of  divine  grace.  In 
the  August  following,  the  Sacrament  of  the  Supper  was 
administered  in  that  place,  which  was  the  first  time  on 
that  side  of  the  Ohio  river,*  when  about  thirty  of  the  sub- 
jects of  this  work  were  admitted  to  communion." 

*  This  refers  only  to  South-eastern  Ohio.  The  Rev.  Daniel  Story 
was  preaching  and  no  doubt  administering  the  Sacraments  of  the 
Church  at  Marietta  and  vicinity,  in  1791 ;  Rev.  James  Kemper,  at 
Cincinnati,  in  the  same  year;  and  Rev.  William  Speer,  who  had  re- 
signed prospects  of  much  usefulness  in  Chambersburg  and  elsewhere, 
and  accepted  of  an  invitation  to  erect  the  standard  of  the  Cross  at 
Chillicothe,  which  was  then  the  seat  of  government  of  the  whole  of 
the  North-west  Territory,  planted  the  first  church  there  in  1798. 


CHAPTER    V. 

ASTONISHING  OUTPOURINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH. 

n^HE  early  settlers  of  Kentucky  were  a  wild  race,  many 
of  them  but  little  instructed  in  the  word  of  God,  and 
paying  little  respect  to  the  ordinances  of  the  gospel.  The 
godly  David  Rice,  who  went  there  in  1783,  says  of  them 
(Memoirs),  "I  found  scarcely  one  man,  and  but  few 
women,  who  supported  a  credible  profession  of  religion. 
Some  were  grossly  ignorant  of  the  first  principles  of  re- 
ligion; some  were  given  to  quarreling  and  fighting,  some 
to  intemperance,  and  perhaps  most  of  them  totally  ignor- 
ant of  the  forms  of  religion  in  their  own  houses.'  And 
yet  "  many  of  them  produced  certificates  of  having  been  in 
fall  communion  and  in  good  standing  in  the  churches  from 
which  they  had  emigrated.'  Here  was  a  material  capable 
of  being  kindled  into  the  most  violent  excitement  by  a  cer- 
tain measure  of  the  genuine  influences  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
alarming  their  fears,  of  showing  them  their  backslidden 
state,  and  peculiarly  liable,  through  ignorance,  to  plunge 
into  fanatical  errors. 

Some  of  the  scenes  witnessed  in  Kentucky  are  almost  be- 
yond our  conception.  An  eyewitness  of  a  vast  meeting  at 
Cane  Ridge,  in  August,  1801,  to  which  people  had  %ome 
from  all  quarters  of  the  State,  even  the  distance  of  two 

3S 


OUTPOUBINGS   KS    THE   SOUTH.  39 

hundred  miles,  and  from  the  settlements  north  of  the 
Ohio,  thus  describes  it:  "We  arrived  upon  the  ground, 
and  here  a  scene  presented  itself  to  my  mind,  not  only 
novel  and  unaccountable,  but  awful  beyond  description.  A 
vast  crowd,  supposed  by  some  to  have  amounted  to  twenty- 
five  thousand,  was  collected  together.  The  noise  was  like 
the  roar  of  Niagara.  The  vast  sea  of  human  beings  seemed 
to  be  agitated  by  a  storm.  I  counted  seven  preachers, 
all  preaching  at  one  time,  some  on  stumps,  others  on 
wagons/  (Rev.  J.  B.  Finley,  Autobiography.)  The 
shouting,  shrieking,  praying  and  nervous  spasms  of  this 
vast  multitude  produced  an  unearthly  and  almost  terrible 
spectacle.  The  religious  exercises  on  the  ground  were  con- 
tinued from  Friday  morning  until  the  ensuing  Wednesday 
evening,  day  and  night,  without  intermission.  Heavy 
rains  fell  during  that  time,  apparently  without  being  no- 
ticed by  the  people,  though  few  were  protected  by  any 
covering. 

From  such  a  tempest  of  religious  emotions  much  evil  re- 
sulted. Campbellism  and  Universalism  have  been  cast 
forth  like  a  scum.  The  Presbyterian  Church  itself  was 
rent  asunder,  and  the  "Cumberland'  branch  of  it,  hold- 
ing semi-Arminian  doctrine,  and  licensing  uneducated  men 
to  preach,  arose  there.  And  these  masses  of  people  were 
convulsed  by  inexplicable  nervous  affections  of  a  spasmodic 
nature.  Still,  from  the  inflammable  chaff  much  wheat  was 
sifted,  which  has  borne  precious  seed  and  been  gathered 
with  rejoicing. 

A  fair  conception  of  the  meetings  in  the  more  sober 
parts  of  the  South-west  may  be  obtained  from  the  following 


40 


THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 


letter,  written  by  Rev.  James  McGready,  descriptive  of 
some  held  in  Tennessee  : 

"The  present  summer  (viz.,  1800)  has  been  the  most 
glorious  time  that  our  guilty  eyes  have  ever  beheld.  All 
the  blessed  displays  of  Almighty  power  and  grace,  all  the 
sweet  gales  of  the  divine  Spirit  and  soul-reviving  showers 
of  the  blessings  of  heaven,  which  we  enjoyed  before,  and 
which  we  considered  wonderful  beyond  conception,  were 
but  like  a  few  scattering  drops  before  the  mighty  rain 
which  Jehovah  has  poured  out  like  a  mighty  river  upon 
this  our  guilty,  unworthy  country.  The  Lord  has  indeed 
showed  himself  a  prayer-hearing  God ;  he  has  given  his 
people  a  praying  spirit  and  a  lively  faith,  and  then  he  has 
answered  their  prayers  far  beyond  their  highest  expecta- 
tions. This  wilderness  and  solitary  place  has  been  made 
glad,  this  dreary  desert  now  rejoices  and  blossoms  like  the 
rose ;  yea,  it  blossoms  abundantly,  and  rejoices  even  with 
joy  and  singing. 

' '  At  Gasper  river,  on  the  fourth  Sabbath  of  June,  a  sur- 
prising multitude  of  people  collected,  many  from  a  very 
great  distance,  even  from  the  distance  of  thirty  to  sixty, 
and  one  hundred  miles.  On  Friday  and  Saturday  there 
was  a  very  solemn  attention.  On  Saturday  evening,  after 
the  congregation  was  dismissed,  as  a  few  serious,  exercised 
Christians  were  sitting  conversing  together,  and  appeared 
to  be  more  than  commonly  engaged,  the  flame  started  from 
them  and  overspread  the  whole  house  until  every  person 
appeared  less  or  more  engaged.  The  greater  part  of  the 
ministers  and  several  hundreds  of  the  people  remained  at 
the  meeting-house  all  night.     Through  every  part  of  the 


OUTPOURINGS   IN    THE   SOUTH.  41 

multitude  there  could  be  found  some  awakened  souls  strug- 
gling in  the  pangs  of  the  new  birth,  ready  to  faint  and  die 
for  Christ,  almost  upon  the  brink  of  desperation.  Others 
again  were  just  lifted  from  the  horrible  pit,  and  beginning  to 
lisp  the  first  notes  of  the  new  song,  and  to  tell  the  sweet 
wonders  which  they  saw  in  Christ.  Ministers  and  experi- 
enced Christians  were  everywhere  engaged  praying,  exhort- 
ing, conversing  and  trying  to  lead  inquiring  souls  to  the 
Lord  Jesus.  In  this  exercise  the  night  was  spent  till  near 
the  break  of  day.  The  Sabbath  was  a  blessed  day  in  every 
sense  of  the  word.  The  groans  of  awakened  sinners  could 
be  heard  all  over  the  house  during  the  morning  sermon, 
but  by  no  means  so  as  to  disturb  the  assembly.  It  was  a 
comfortable  time  with  many  at  the  table.  Mr.  McGee 
preached  in  the  evening  upon  the  account  of  Peter's 
sinking  in  the  waves.  In  the  application  of  his  sermon 
the  power  of  God  seemed  to  shake  the  whole  assembly. 
Toward  the  close  of  the  sermon  the  cries  of  the  distressed 
arose  almost  as  loud  as  his  voice.  After  the  congregation 
was  dismissed  the  solemnity  increased  till  the  greater  part 
of  the  multitude  seemed  engaged  in  the  most  solemn  man- 
ner. No  person  appeared  to  wish  to  go  home ;  hunger  and 
sleep  seemed  to  affect  nobody.  Eternal  things  were  the 
vast  concern.  Here  awakening  and  converting  work  was 
to  be  found  in  every  part  of  the  multitude,  and  even  some 
things  strangely  and  wonderfully  new  to  me.  Sober  pro- 
fessors, who  had  been  communicants  for  many  years,  now 
lying  prostrate  on  the  ground,  crying  out  in  such  language 
as  this  :  '  I  have  been  a  sober  professor,  I  have  been  a 
communicant ;    0,    I  have  been  deceived,  I  have  no  re- 


42  THE   GREAT    REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

ligion.'  The  greater  part  of  the  multitude  continued  at 
the  meeting-house  all  night,  and  no  person  appeared  un- 
easy for  food  or  sleep. 

"  On  Monday  a  vast  concourse  of  people  came  together. 
This  was  another  day  of  the  Son  of  Man.  With  propriety 
we  could  adopt  the  language  of  the  patriarch,  and  say, 
'  The  Lord  is  here :  how  dreadful  is  this  place  !  It  is  none 
other  but  the  house  of  God  and  the  very  gate  of  heaven ! ' 
Two  powerful  sermons  were  preached  by  Messrs.  McGee 
and  Hodge.  The  almighty  power  of  God  attended  the 
word  to  the  hearts  of  many,  and  a  universal  solemnit}' 
overspread  the  whole  assembly.  When  the  congregation 
was  dismissed,  no  person  seemed  to  wish  to  leave  the  place. 
The  solemnity  increased,  and  conviction  seemed  to  spread 
from  heart  to  heart.  Little  children,  young  men  and 
women,  and  old  gray-headed  people,  persons  of  every  de- 
scription, white  and  black,  were  to  be  found  in  every  part 
of  the  multitude,  pricked  to  the  heart  with  clear,  rational, 
scriptural  convictions,  crying  out  for  mercy  in  the  most  ex- 
treme distress ;  whilst  every  now  and  then  we  could  find 
one  and  another  delivered  from  their  burden  of  sin  and 
guilt  by  sweet  believing  views  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the 
face  of  Jesus  Christ.  In  such  exercises  the  multitude  con- 
tinued at  the  meeting-house  till  Tuesday  morning  after 
sunrise,  when  they  broke  up  after  they  were  dismissed  by 
prayer,  and  indeed  the  circumstance  of  their  parting  added 
to  the  solemnity  of  the  occasion.  The  number  that,  we 
hope,  were  savingly  brought  to  Christ  on  this  occasion  were 
forty- five  persons. ' ' 

The  population  of  North  Carolina  was  largely  Prcsby- 


OUTPOUBINGS   IS    THE   SOUTH.  43 

terian.  The  persecutions  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  cen- 
tury drove  man}7  of  the  Scotch  to  take  refuge  in  the  two 
Carolinas.  There  they  cherished  a  love  of  freedom,  made 
the  more  ardent  by  the  memory  of  their  own  sufferings. 
There  was  a  warm  religious  sympathy  between  them  and 
the  Presbyterians  of  Pennsylvania.  Ministers  often  passed 
from  the  one  section  to  the  other. 

In  1788,  James  McGready,  a  pupil  of  Dr.  McMillan,  of 
Canonsburgh,  was  licensed  to  preach  by  the  Presbytery  of 
Redstone.  He  possessed  much  of  his  teacher's  strong  and 
energetic  character  and  fervent  zeal,  kindled  by  the  fire  of 
the  earlier  revivals.  He  soon  afterward  went  to  North  Caro- 
lina, where  he  had  spent  some  of  his  earlier  years,  and 
commenced  preaching  with  a  power  which  earned  him  the 
name  of  u  Boanerges."  He  went  from  there  to  Tennessee 
and  Kentucky  in  1796.  His  terrible  denunciations  of  prev- 
alent sins  and  plain  expositions  of  the  only  way  of  salvation 
prepared  the  way  for  a  deep  interest  in  the  later  revival  in 
the  regions  north  and  west,  and  for  the  rapid  communica- 
tion of  its  influences. 

One  of  the  most  memorable  scenes  in  its  course  in  North 
Carolina  was  witnessed  at  a  communion  in  Orange  County. 
Rev.  Dr.  W.  II.  Foote,  in  his  Sketches  of  North  Carolina, 
thus  describes  it: 

"In  August,  1801,  a  communion  season  was  held  at 
Cross  Roads  in  Orange  County.  The  stated  minister,  Win. 
Paisley,  was  assisted  by  Rev.  Dr.  Caldwell  and  Rev.  Leon- 
ard Prather,  and  two  young  licentiates,  Hugh  Shaw  and 
Ebenezer  B.  Currie.  Nothing  of  especial  interest  appealed 
in  the  congregation  during  the  days  preceding  the  Sabbath, 


44  THE   GREAT    REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

or  during  the  administration  of  the  ordinance.  Great  so- 
lemnity prevailed,  mingled  with  evident  anxiety  as  well  as 
prayer,  among  Christians,  that  God  would  bless  the  con- 
gregation and  revive  his  work.  On  Monday,  the  28th,  the 
public  services  were  conducted  by  Messrs.  Prather  and 
Shaw,  without  any  expression  or  appearance  of  emotion 
among  the  people.  The  pastor  arose  to  dismiss  the  people, 
intending  first  to  say  a  few  words  expressive  of  his  sorrow 
that  apparently  no  advance  had  been  made  in  bringing  sin- 
ners to  God.  Overwhelmed  with  his  sensations  of  distress 
that  God  had  imparted  no  blessings  to  his  people,  he  stood 
silent  a  few  moments  and  then  sat  down.  A  solemn  still- 
ness pervaded  the  congregation.  In  a  few  moments  he 
rose  again ;  before  he  uttered  a  word,  a  young  man  from 
Tennessee,  who  had  been  interested  in  the  revival  there, 
and  had  been  telling  the  people  of  Cross  Roads  during  the 
meeting  much  about  the  state  of  things  in  the  West,  raised 
up  his  hands  and  cried  out,  '  Stand  still  and  see  the  salva- 
tion of  God ! '  In  a  few  moments  the  silence  was  broken 
by  sobs,  groans  and  cries,  rising  commingled  from  all  parts 
of  the  house.  All  thoughts  of  dismissing  the  congregation 
at  once  vanished.  The  remainder  of  the  day  was  spent  in 
the  exercises  of  prayer,  exhortation,  singing  and  personal 
conversation,  and  midnight  came  before  the  congregation 
could  be  persuaded  to  go  to  their  respective  homes.  The 
excitement  continued  for  a  length  of  time,  and  many  were 
hopefully  converted  to  God.  No  irregularities  appeared  in 
this  commencement  of  the  great  excitement  in  North  Car- 
olina ;  the  sobs  and  groans  and  cries  for  mercy  were  un- 


OUTPOURINGS    IN    THE   SOUTH.  45 

usual,  but  seemed  justified  by  the  deep  feeling  of  indi- 
viduals on  account  of  the  great  interests  concerned. 

4 'In  October  following,  the  usual  fall  communion  was 
held  in  Hawfields,  the  other  part  of  Mr.  Paisley's  charge. 
The  expression  of  feeling  was  great  from  the  first ;  the  peo- 
ple from  Cross  Roads  were  there  in  their  fervency  of  ex- 
citement and  hope,  and  multitudes,  whom  the  report  of 
what  had  been  done  at  the  August  meeting  drew  together, 
were  full  of  expectation,  some  wondering  and  some  seeking 
their  salvation.  People  from  a  distance  came  in  their 
wagons  and  remained  on  the  ground  all  night.  The  meet- 
ing was  continued  for  five  days  without  intermission,  the 
various  religious  services  of  prayer,  singing,  sermons,  ex- 
hortations and  personal  conversations  succeeding  each 
other,  with  short  intervals  of  refreshment,  during  the  day, 
and  a  few  hours  for  sleep  during  the  night.  Impressions 
of  a  religious  nature  were  very  general  and  very  deep,  and 
in  a  great  multitude  of  cases  abiding.  This  was  the  first 
camp-meeting  in  North  Carolina.  They  soon  became  com- 
mon all  over  the  South  and  West.  Log-cabins  were  built 
at  the  accustomed  or  designed  place  of  meeting  in  sufficient 
numbers  to  accommodate  a  large  assembly ;  and  from  an 
occasional  meeting  they  became  regular  appointments, 
which  are  not  yet  entirely  discontinued. 

"  The  excitement  spread  rapidly  over  the  congregations 
in  the  upper  part  of  Orange  Presbytery,  which  then  in- 
cluded all  the  State  east  of  the  Yadkin  river ;  and  in  the 
early  part  of  1802,  the  Presbytery  of  Concord,  embracing 
the  section  of  the  State  west  of  the  Yadkin,  and  the  east- 


46  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1S00. 

em  part  of  the  State,  now  embraced  by  Fayetteville  Pres- 
bytery, began  to  be  visited. 

"  In  all  our  charges  were  families  who  had  been  princi- 
pally engaged  in  promoting  and  holding  religious  societies, 
and  were  engaged  in  fervent  prayer  for  a  time  of  refreshing 
from  the  presence  of  the  Lord  ;  some  of  them  for  more 
than  eighteen  months  before  that  time.  And  should  this 
little  narrative  be  thought  worthy  of  the  public  eye,  my 
design  in  it  is  to  encourage  God's  children  to  be  fervent  at 
the  throne  of  grace,  not  only  in  secret,  but  social  prayer. 
From  what  I  have  known  of  the  fervency  and  persevering 
importunity  of  those  families  upon  whom  that  remarkable 
effusion  of  divine  grace  fell,  I  think  I  never  saw  a  geomet- 
rical proposition  demonstrated  with  more  clear  evidence 
than  I  have  seen  an  answer  given  to  the  prayers  of  those 
pious  parents. 

' c  At  all  our  meetings  a  considerable  number  professed  to 
obtain  the  comforts  of  religion,  and,  of  those,  I  have  not  heard 
of  one  whose  conduct  has  dishonored  his  or  her  profession. 
Praying  societies  are  formed  in  all  our  congregations,  both 
supplied  and  vacant.  In  those  the  work  seems  to  be  pro- 
moted as  much,  and  often  more  than  in  our  congregational 
assemblies.  The  face  of  the  public,  in  point  of  morals,  is 
evidently  changed  for  the  better,  even  in  those  places  where 
the  good  work  has  not  reached.  It  is  to  me  no  inconsider- 
able proof  that  the  work  is  carried  on  by  the  same  Divine, 
omnipresent  Spirit,  when  I  behold  such  a  sameness  of  ex- 
ercises in  the  different  subjects." 

The  labors  of  the  Rev.  James  Hall,  who  was  Moderator 
of  the  General  Assembly  in  1803,  were  crcatlv  blessed. 


OUTPOURINGS    IX    THE   .SOUTH.  17 

His  preaching  was  "clear,  earnest  and  pungent.'  In  a 
letter  to  the  New  York  Missionary  Magazine  he  narrated 
some  of  the  circumstances  of  several  "general  meetings 
held  in  the  Presbytery  of  Concord. ' '  At  one  of  these,  four- 
teen Presbyterian  ministers  were  present,  and  eleven  of 
other  denominations.  He  says,  "This  was  by  much  the 
most  numerous  and  solemn  assembly  I  ever  beheld.  There 
were  within  the  camp  three  places  for  public  preaching, 
and  all  occupied  by  vastly  large  assemblies.  The  number 
present  on  that  day  could  not  be  less  than  six  or  seven 
thousand." 

It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  some  in  these  great  crowds 
of  people  came  from  great  distances,  in  midwinter,  and 
that  the  exercises  in  the  open  air  were  uninterrupted, 
though  the  da}Ts  were  "  the  most  inclement  of  the  winter." 
On  a  Saturday  morning  a  violent  storm  of  rain  fell  upon 
the  worshipers,  which  "turned  to  sleet,  succeeded  by  a 
mixture  of  snow,  and  this  followed  again  by  rain,"  and 
yet  such  was  the  intense  anxiety  to  hear  the  words  of 
eternal  life,  that  the  multitude  around  the  different  speakers 
"continued  there  until  within  half  an  hour  of  sunsetting, 
when  we  requested  them  to  retire  to  their  tents  to  take 
some  refreshment,  promising  that  we  would  there  wait 
upon  them  in  the  night." 

Many  of  the  ministers  from  South  Carolina,  Georgia  and 
Virginia,  hearing  the  amazing  tidings  of  the  revival  in 
Kentucky,  Tennessee  and  North  Carolina,  visited  those 
States  to  satisfy  themselves  as  to  their  genuineness,  and  re- 
turned to  start  the  flame  of  them  among  their  own  people. 
The  Rev,  James  McGreadij  writes: 


48  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1S00. 

"By  the  latest  accounts  we  hear  that  the  flame  has 
reached  South  Carolina,  and  is  going  on  with  rapid 
progress.  I  would  just  mention,  for  the  comfort  of  God's 
people  in  your  country,  that  I  never  knew  a  revival  with 
fewer  instances  of  deceptions  or  delusive  hopes.  It  is  truly 
astonishing  to  find  those  who  are  delivered  from  their  bur- 
den of  guilt  and  distress  to  be  the  subjects  of  such  clear, 
rational,  scriptural  views  of  the  gospel  scheme  of  salvation, 
and  the  nature  of  Christ's  satisfaction  to  the  law  and 
justice,  and  his  willingness  to  save  guilty,  lost  sinners.  It 
is  a  common  case  for  illiterate  negroes  and  little  children 
of  five,  six,  seven  and  eight  years  old,  when  they  get  their 
first  comforts,  to  speak  of  their  views  of  the  mediatorial 
glories  of  Christ ;  his  fullness,  suitableness  and  sufficiency 
to  save  to  the  uttermost ;  their  views  of  the  holiness  of 
God  and  the  purity  of  the  divine  law,  and  such  like  sub- 
jects, with  an  eloquence  and  pathos  that  would  not  disgrace 
a  preacher  of  the  gospel." 

In  Rev.  Dr.  Foote's  Sketches  of  Virginia  it  is  said : 

"The  excitement,  with  some  of  its  peculiarities,  was  felt 
in  Virginia,  first  in  the  Presbyterian  settlements  along  the 
head- waters  of  the  Kanawha,  in  Greenbrier  County.  Here 
were  no  stated  ministers.  Missionaries  occasionally  visited 
them.  The  work  began  at  a  prayer-meeting  of  private 
Christians.  Ministers  from  Kentucky  recognized  here  the 
power  of  spiritual  truths  over  the  minds  of  men,  as  they 
had  seen  it  in  the  West. 

"  In  the  latter  part  of  the  year  1801,  the  churches  under 
the  care  of  Messrs.  Mitchel  and  Turner  were  greatly  re- 
vived.    A  meeting  held  at  the  close  of  the  year  was  noted 


OUTPOURINGS   IN   THE   SOUTH.  49 

for  the  number  of  people  impressed  with  a  deep  sense  of 
the  value  as  well  as  truth  of  the  gospel.  Many  made  pro- 
fession of  their  faith.  In  the  succeeding  spring  the  influ- 
ence of  Divine  truth  was  felt  with  increased  force.  The 
Presbytery  of  Hanover  met  at  Bethel.  Crowds  attended 
upon  the  ministrations  of  the  gospel.  About  one  hundred 
had  now  professed  conversion.  The  congregations  in  Al- 
bemarle, in  Prince  Edward  and  Charlotte,  were  greatly 
awakened,  and  the  happy  influence  was  felt  over  a  large 
region  of  country  east  of  the  Blue  Ridge. 

' 'The  awakening  continued  in  different  parts  of  the 
Synod  for  some  years.  There  were  many  hopeful  converts 
where  there  was  no  stated  ministry  or  regular  church  or- 
ganization. Many  of  these,  looking  in  vain  to  the  Presby- 
terian Church  for  the  living  ministry,  turned  their  atten- 
tion to  other  denominations  prepared  to  supply  their  wants, 
and  are  now  lost  to  the  Presbyterian  Church.  The  demand 
for  educated  ministers  came  pressing  on  the  Synod.  She 
looked  to  her  colleges  and  to  the  sons  of  the  Church  and 

to  her  God  for  the  supply." 
4 


CHAPTER  VI. 

GREAT  RAINS  OF  GRACE  IN  THE  EASTERN  STATES. 

rPHE  Holy  Spirit  descended  in  smaller  measure  upon 
many  places  in  the  Middle  States  east  of  the  mountains, 
and  along  the  Northern  Lakes,  at  the  same  time  in  which  the 
rains  of  which  we  have  been  speaking  came  down  so  copi- 
ously throughout  the  West  and  South. 

The  preaching  of  Dr.  Alexander  McWhorter  of  Newark, 
New  Jersey,  the  Moderator  of  the  General  Assembly  in 
1794,  was  always  powerful  and  affecting.  Numerous  re- 
vivals were  granted  to  his  church.  But  in  1802  there  was 
one  of  extraordinary  extent  and  continuance — one  hundred 
and  forty  persons  were  brought  in  during  two  years,  under  the 
pastoral  labors  of  his  successor,  Dr.  E.  D.  Griffin.  Previous 
to  it  Dr.  Griffin  was  in  much  distress.  He  says:  "As  I 
was  walking  in  the  streets  of  Newark,  pondering  upon  my 
sins,  a  flash  of  light  came  across  my  mind,  sending  home  a 
conviction  of  sin  which  instantly  deprived  me  of  hope. 
The  following  dialogue  then  took  place  with  myself:  '  Well, 
go  to  Christ  as  you  direct  others  to  do. '  '  But  he  is  away 
beyond  the  hills,  and  I  cannot  get  to  him.'  'Well,  ask 
him  to  bring  you  to  him.'  'But  the  prayers  of  the  un- 
regenerate  cannot  ascend  above  the  clouds.  I  have  nothing 
to  stand  upon  to  begin.'  I  felt  then  totally  undone,  help- 
less and  hopeless.  I  did  then  as  Paul  did  on  the  plains 
50 


GREAT    RAINS   OF   GRACE.  51 

of  Damascus.  Instantly  the  scene  changed.  I  was  com- 
posed in  a  moment,  and  seemed  to  lie  down  at  God's  feet 
and  rest  every  issue  on  his  will  without  a  struggle."  Then 
he  learned,  as  he  says,  to  leave  it  at  last  to  Christ,  and  his 
preaching  became  "full  of  Christ."  {Steai'ns:  History  of 
the  First  Church,  Newark.) 

The  eminent  Robert  Finley,  named  by  Dr.  Archibald 
Alexander  "the  father  of  the  American  Colonization  So- 
ciety' (Ilistonj  of  African  Colonization),  was  "an  able, 
evangelical  and  uncommonly  successful  preacher."  It  is 
narrated  (Sprague:  Annals)  that  at  Baskenridge,  in  1803, 
"a  revival  of  great  power  took  place  among  his  people  at 
the  same  time  that  other  churches  in  the  neighborhood 
were  visited  in  a  similar  manner.  The  number  admitted 
to  the  communion  as  the  fruits  of  this  revival  was  about 
one  hundred  and  fifty." 

The  devoted  laborers,  Henry  Kollock,  James  Richards, 
and  others,  went  forth  among  the  destitute  mountain  re- 
gions of  Northern  New  Jersey,  "especially  to  the  iron 
mines  and  furnaces.'5  "The  tears  flowed  down  the  cheeks  of 
the  hardy  men ' '  there  under  the  power  of  the  truth.  There 
were  revivals  in  other  parts  of  the  State.  Four  years 
later  the  former  blessings  were  renewed  in  some  of  these 
places,  under  the  preaching  of  the  celebrated  Dr.  Gideon 
Blackburn,  of  Tennessee.  Dr.  Griffin  said  of  it,  "The 
work,  in  point  of  stillness  and  power,  exceeds  all  I  have  ever 
seen." 

The  State  of  New  York  during  the  last  century  was 
gradually  colonized  westward  by  a  bold  and  enterprising 
class  of  people,  some  of  whom,  like  the  same  class  in  the 


52  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1S00. 

new  States  of  the  West  to-day,  were  speculators  in  land,  or 
those  whose  misfortunes,  or  vices,  or  roving  character,  dis- 
posed to  regard  with  distaste  the  staid  associations  and 
habits  of  older  communities,  and  to  cast  off  the  obligations 
of  religion.  It  was  long  a  common  saying,  "Religion  has 
not  got  west  of  the  Genesee  River. "  Some  of  the  towns 
were  hotbeds  of  infidelity ;  and  the  books  of  Tom  Paine, 
Voltaire,  and  their  tribe,  were  largely  circulated  through 
the  country. 

In  the  eastern  part  of  the  State  the  labors  of  the  godly 
Seth  Williston,  whose  name  must  ever  be  dear  to  many 
through  some  of  his  writings,  of  JedediahBushnell,  and  other 
faithful  men,  were  the  means  of  the  conversion  of  large 
numbers.  The  winter  of  1798  was  marked  "by  a  wonder- 
ful display  of  divine  power  and  grace  in  the  conversion  of 
sinners ' '  in  Palmyra,  Canandaigua  and  several  of  the  larger 
towns  along  the  southern  border  of  the  State.  But  the 
most  memorable  outpourings  of  the  Holy  Spirit  were  later. 
"The  year  1800,  for  a  long  period,"  says  Dr.  E.  H.  Gillett, 
in  his  History  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  "was  destined  to 
be  remembered  throughout  the  region  as  the  year  of  The 
Great  Revival.'  "It  commenced  at  Palmyra,  and  soon 
extended  to  Bristol,  Bloomfield,  Canandaigua,  Richmond 
and  Lima,  and  to  other  places  in  a  less  marked  manner." 
"The  doctrines,"  said  Williston,  "which  God  makes  use 
of  to  awaken  and  convert  sinners  are  those  which  are  com- 
monly distinguished  as  '  Calvinistic.'  "  The  Rev.  James 
II.  Ilotchkin  [History  of  Western  New  York)  says  of  the 
revival  of  1799-1800: 

The  counties  of  Delaware  and  Otsego  were  powerfully 


GREAT   RAINS   OF   GRACE.  53 

affected  by  it,  So  also  was  tlic  county  of  Oneida,  which 
lay  to  the  north.  It  was  a  general  shaking  of  the  valley  of 
dry  bones.  God  manifested  himself  in  his  glory  in  build- 
ing up  Zion.  The  tide  of  infidelity,  which  was  setting  in 
with  so  strong  a  current,  was  rolled  back,  and  Western 
New  York  was  delivered  from  the  moral  desolation  which 
threatened  it.  The  general  prosperity,  the  religious  order, 
the  benevolent  and  literary  institutions,  which  constitute 
the  glory  and  happiness  of  this  section  of  country,  it  cannot 
be  doubted,  are  in  no  inconsiderable  degree  attributable  to 
the  change  produced  in  the  current  of  public  sentiment,  as 
the  consequence  of  this  extended  revival  of  religion.  The 
year  1798  is  an  era  which  should  long  be  remembered  in 
Western  New  York,  as  giving  a  character  to  this  part  of 
the  State  which  laid  a  foundation  for  its  large  prosperity 
and  improvement  in  all  things  useful.7' 

Amidst  the  sober  population  of  New  England  the  fruits 
of  the  previous  labors  of  many  able  and  godly  servants  of 
Christ  appeared  in  numerous  places.  In  some  congre- 
gations, in  which  since  the  times  of  Jonathan  Edwards 
there  had  been  little  or  no  evidence  of  the  special  presence 
of  the  Spirit  of  God,  there  were  sudden  effusions  of  extra- 
ordinary power.  Then,  indeed,  said  Dr.  Porter,  subsequently 
professor  at  Andover,  "  the  day  dawned  which  was  to  suc- 
ceed a  night  of  more  than  sixty  years.  As  in  the  valley  of 
Ezekicl's  vision,  there  was  a  great  shaking.  Dry  bones, 
animated  by  the  breath  of  the  Almighty,  stood  up  new- 
born believers.  The  children  of  Zion  beheld  with  over- 
flowing hearts,  and  with  thankful  hearts  acknowledged, 
1  this  is  the  finger  of  God/     The  work  was  stamped  con- 


54  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

spicuously  with  the  impress  of  its  Divine  author,  and  its 
joyful  effects  evinced  no  other  than  the  agency  of  Omni- 
potence." This  was  at  Washington,  Connecticut.  At  nu- 
merous places  in  Connecticut  and  Massachusetts  there 
were,  as  the  Rev.  Moses  HallocJc  said,  displays  of  Divine 
powers  and  grace  which  far  exceeded  what  they  "ever  before 
saw."  "The  revival,'  remarks  Dr.  Shepperd,  of  Lenox, 
Mass.,"  began  in  the  church,  as  I  believe  is  almost  always  the 
case  when  God  pours  out  his  Spirit. "  "  The  work  has  been 
attended  with  remarkable  regularity.  God  was  emphatic- 
ally in  c  the  still  small  voice.'  No  dreams  and  visions,  no 
hearing  unusual  voices  and  seeing  uncommon  sights,  no  ex- 
travagance even  in  gestures  or  outcries,  appeared.  The 
power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  was  not  controlled  by  ordinary 
rules,  nor  did  it  operate  according  to  the  expectations  of 
men.  Some  who  had  long  sat  under  the  teachings  of  the 
house  of  God  were  left  to  hardness  and  impenitence ;  and 
others  were  pierced  with  extraordinary  views  of  the  truths 
of  God's  word  or  of  nature."  "One  instance,  somewhat 
singular,  may  be  worthy  of  note.  There  was  a  respectable 
man  who  remained  an  attentive  observer  till  near  the  close 
of  the  awakening,  without  any  particular  operation  on  his 
own  mind.  Going  one  day  out  of  town,  on  a  law  suit,  it 
turned  in  his  mind  that  the  Bible  was  the  best  law  book, 
the  eternal  rule  of  right  between  man  and  man.  The  same 
thought  occurred  to  his  mind  frequently  when  going  home, 
and  when  he  retired  for  the  night ;  but  it  gave  him  no  par- 
ticular alarm.  When  he  awoke  before  day  the  same  im- 
pression was  running  in  his  mind,  'The  Bible  is  the  best 
law  book.'     He  rose,  made  a  fire,  and  while  he  sat  medita- 


GJEIEAT   RAINS   OF   GRACE.  55 

ting  upon  this  impression,  all  at  once  his  soul  was  filled 
with  rapture,  and  ere  he  was  aware,  he  was  l  like  the  char- 
iots of  Amminadib.'  Tie  beheld  such  glory  and  beauty  in 
the  Divine  character  as  he  could  not  describe,  and  his  mouth 
was  immediately  filled  with  praise.  He  set  up  family  duties, 
and  continued  in  this  sweet  and  comfortable  frame  of  mind 
for  a  considerable  time  without  thinking  of  its  being  a 
change  of  heart ;  but  finding  his  soul  filled  with  love  to 
God,  drawn  forth  with  peculiar  affection  towards  the  breth- 
ren, and  the  most  earnest  desire  for  the  salvation  of  souls 
and  a  delight  in  the  duties  of  religion,  he  was  led  to  hope 
he  had  become  a  new  man,  and  was  admitted  to  the  church, 
where  he  has  adorned  his  profession." 

The  Great  Revival  reached  out  into  the  wildernesses  of 
Vermont  and  New  Hampshire,  and  some  of  their  hardy 
inhabitants  became  bright  trophies  of  the  power  of  redeem- 
ing grace.  In  no  part  of  the  country  were  the  best  fruits  of 
it  more  abundant  than  in  New  England  ;  not  alone  in  souls 
converted,  but  also  in  the  organization  of  evangelistic  and 
charitable  institutions  which  have  proved  a  blessing  to  the 
nation  and  to  the  world. 


CHAPTER    VII. 

TESTIMONIES  AS  TO  THE  GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF 

THE  REVIVAL   OF  1800. 

"T  will  give  us  more  confidence  in  the  character  and  fruits 

of  this  vast  and  mighty  work  to  notice  the  judgments 

which  were  formed  of  it  at  the  time  by  capable  witnesses, 

omitting  reference  to  the   excesses  or  peculiarities  which 

appeared  about  its  course  in  some  regions. 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Ileman  Humphrey,  long  President  of 
Amherst  College,  who  was  in  the  Freshman  class  at  Yale 
in  1802  when  the  college  was  visited  with  such  a  revival 
as  it  had  never  before  known,  says  in  his  Revival  Sketches : 

11  In  looking  back  fifty  years  and  more,  the  great  revival 
of  that  period  strikes  me,  in  its  thoroughness,  in  its  depth, 
in  its  freedom  from  animal,  unhealthy  excitement,  and  its 
far-reaching  influence  on  subsequent  revivals,  as  having 
been  decidedly  in  advance  of  any  that  had  preceded  it.  It 
was  the  opening  of  a  new  revival  epoch  which  has  lasted 
now  more  than  half  a  century,  with  but  short  and  partial 
interruptions— and  blessed  be  the  God,  the  end  is  not  yet. 

"Thus  the  glorious  cause  of  religion  and  philanthropy 
has  advanced  till  it  would  require  a  space  which  cannot  be 
afforded  in  these  sketches,  so  much  as  to  name  the  Chris- 
tian and  humane  societies  which  have  sprung  up  all  over 
56 


GENERAL   CHARACTER   OF   THE   REVIVAL.     57 

the  land  within  the  last  forty  years.  Exactly  how  much 
we  at  home  and  the  world  abroad  are  indebted  for  these 
organizations,  so  rich  in  blessing,  to  the  revivals  of  1800,  it 
is  impossible  to  say,  though  much  every  way — more  than 
enough  to  magnify  the  grace  of  God  in  the  instruments  he 
employed,  in  the  immediate  fruits  of  their  labors,  and  the 
subsequent  harvests  springing  from  the  good  seed  which 
was  sown  by  the  men  whom  God  delighted  thus  to  honor. 
It  cannot  be  denied  that  modern  missions  sprung  out  of 
these  revivals.  The  immediate  connection  between  them, 
as  cause  and  effect,  was  remarkably  clear  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  first  societies  which  have  since  accomplished  so 
much  ;  and  the  impulse  which  they  gave  to  the  churches  to 
extend  the  blessings  which  they  were  diffusing,  by  forming 
the  later  affiliated  societies  of  like  aims  and  character,  is 
scarcely  less  obvious.  Taken  altogether,  the  revival  period 
at  the  close  of  the  last  century  and  the  beginning  of  the 
present  furnishes  ample  materials  for  a  long  and  glorious 
chapter  in  the  History  of  Redemption." 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Gardiner  Spring,  the  venerable  pastor  of 
the  Brick  Church,  New  York,  was  a  convert  in  another 
revival  in  the  same  institution  the  next  year.  He  thus 
writes  {Personal  Reminiscences) : 

"From  the  year  1800  down  to  the  year  1825,  there  was 
an  uninterrupted  series  of  these  celestial  visitations  spread- 
ing over  different  parts  of  the  land.  During  the  whole  of 
these  twenty-five  years  there  was  not  a  month  in  which 
we  could  not  point  to  some  village,  some  city,  some  semi- 
nary of  learning,  and  say,  *  Behold  what  God  hath 
wrought!' 


58  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

"I  marvel  not  a  little,  that,  after  all  our  eyes  have  seen 
and  our  ears  have  heard,  there  should  be  good  men  among 
us  who  look  with  suspicion  upon  these  days  of  mercy,  and 
who  do  not  rather  hail  them,  even  in  this  midnight  of  our 
national  tribulations,  as  the  harbinger  of  that  predicted 
period  '  when  the  light  of  the  moon  shall  be  as  the  light 
of  the  sun,  and  the  light  of  the  sun  shall  be  seven-fold,  as 
the  light  of  seven  days.'  This  is  a  ruined  world  ;  I  should 
give  up  all  for  lost,  unless  God  thus  appear  in  his  glory, 
and  build  up  Zion.  There  is  no  other  helper,  there  is  no 
other  hope !" 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel  Ralston,  of  Allegheny  County, 
Pennsylvania,  a  laborer  amidst  the  harvest  scenes,  in  his 
Letters  showing,  in  opposition  to  certain  enemies  of  the 
work,  that  it  was  "agreeable  to  the  Word  of  God,"  and 
kindred  with  the  great  revivals  in  Scotland  and  in  New 
England,  testifies  that  "  this  work  was  begun  and  carried 
on  in  this  country  under  the  preaching  and  influence  of  the 
doctrines  contained  in  the  Confession  of  Faith  of  the  Pres- 
byterian Churches."  "That  this  work  is  a  gracious  work 
of  the  Spirit  of  God  is  apparent  to  me  from  the  effects  it 
lias  produced.  It  has  reclaimed  the  wicked  and  the  prof- 
ligate, and  transformed  the  lion  into  a  lamb.  It  has  brought 
professed  deists  to  become  professed  Christians,  and  turned 
their  cursings  into  blessings  and  their  blasphemies  into 
praises.  Many  who  could  not  relish  any  religious  conver- 
sation are  now  only  delighted  when  talking  about  the  plan 
of  salvation  and  the  wonders  of  redeeming  love;  and 
many,  very  many,  give  evidence  by  their  life  and  conversa- 
tion that  they  arc  born  of  God.     And  to  this  I  would  add, 


GENERAL    CHARACTER    OF    THE    REVIVAL.     59 

that  it  has  had  this  effect  on  many  of  all  ranks,  ages,  sexes 
and  colors ;  the  African  as  well  as  the  European  and  Amer- 
ican. The  combined  hordes  of  deists,  hypocrites  and  form- 
alists are  general]}'  opposed  to  it.  Some  also  have  fallen 
away,  but  this  is  no  objection,  but  rather  an  evidence  that 
it  is  the  work  of  the  Spirit  of  God." 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Moses  Iloge,  of  Virginia,  when  he  had 
witnessed  and  had  an  opportunity  to  judge  of  some  of  these 
outpourings  in  1802,  in  North  Carolina,  wrote  to  Dr. 
Ashbel  Green,  of  Philadelphia,  "This  work  seems  to  lead 
to  a  more  clear  and  distinct  view  of  the  operations  of  the 
Divine  Spirit  upon  the  heart  of  a  sinner  in  his  conversion 
and  in  subsequent  communications  than  can  be  obtained 
from  ordinary  revivals.  For,  as  a  pious  and  sensible  woman 
of  this  country  has  well  expressed  it,  Jesus  Christ  seems  to 
be  there,  exercising  in  a  visible  manner  his  offices  as  a 
Mediator." 

The  Rev.  Dr.  George  A.  Baxter,  of  Washington  Acad- 
emy, Virginia,  visited  Kentucky  in  1801,  and  thus  describes 
his  conclusions  as  to  the  Revival  in  that  section  of  the 
country,  in  a  letter  to  Dr.  Archibald  Alexander : 

1 '  I  left  the  country  about  the  1  st  of  November,  at  which 
time  this  revival,  in  connection  with  the  one  on  the  Cum- 
berland, had  covered  the  whole  State  of  Kentucky,  ex- 
cepting a  small  settlement  which  borders  on  the  water  of 
Green  River,  in  which  no  Presbyterian  ministers  are 
settled,  and  I  believe  very  few  of  any  denomination.  The 
^>ower  with  which  this  revival  has  spread,  and  its  influence 
in  moralizing  the  people,  are  difficult  for  you  to  conceive, 
and  more  so  for  me  to  describe.     I  had  heard  many  ac- 


GO  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

counts,  and  seen  many  letters  respecting  it,  before  I  went 
into  that  country;  but  my  expectations,  though  greatly 
raised,  were  much  below  the  reality  of  the  work.  Their 
congregations,  when  engaged  in  worship,  presented  scenes 
of  solemnity  superior  to  what  I  had  ever  seen  before.  And 
in  private  houses  it  was  no  uncommon  thing  to  hear 
parents  relate  to  strangers  the  wonderful  things  which 
God  had  done  in  their  neighborhoods,  while  a  large  family 
of  young  people,  collected  around  them,  would  be  in  tears. 
On  my  way  to  Kentucky,  I  was  informed  by  settlers  on 
the  road  that  the  character  of  Kentucky  travelers  was  en- 
tirely changed,  and  that  they  were  now  as  remarkable  for 
sobriety  as  they  had  formerly  been  for  dissoluteness  and 
immorality.  And  indeed  I  found  Kentucky,  to  appearance, 
the  most  moral  place  I  had  ever  seen.  A  profane  expres- 
sion was  hardly  ever  heard.  A  religious  awe  seemed  to 
pervade  the  country.  And  some  deistical  characters  had 
confessed  that,  from  whatever  cause  the  revival  might 
proceed,  it  made  the  people  better.  Its  influence  was  not 
less  visible  in  promoting  a  friendly  temper  among  the  peo- 
ple. Nothing  could  appear  more  amicable  than  that  un- 
ci issembled  benevolence  which  governs  the  subjects  of  this 
work.'  "As  an  eye-witness  in  the  case,  I  may  be  per- 
mitted to  declare  that  the  professions  of  those  under  relig- 
ious convictions  were  generally  marked  with  such  a  degree 
of  engagedncss  and  feeling  as  willful  hypocrisy  could  hardly 
assume.'  "Upon  the  whole,  I  think  the  revival  of  Ken- 
tucky among  the  most  extraordinary  that  have  ever  visited 
the  Church  of  Christ. "  "Extraordinary  power  is  the  lead- 
ing characteristic  of  this  revival.     Both  saints  and  sinners 


GENERAL   CHARACTER   OF   THE    REVIVAL.     61 

have  more  striking  discoveries  of  the  realities  of  another 
world  than  I  have  ever  known  on  any  other  occasion." 

For  the  sake  of  its  precious  lessons  we  will  quote  the  tes- 
timony of  one  more  witness  from  the  many  who  might  be 
brought  forward.  The  Rev.  David  Rice  preached  a  sermon 
at  the  opening  of  the  Synod  of  Kentucky,  in  1803,  in  rela- 
tion to  the  general  beneficent  character  of  the  Revival  in 
that  section  of  our  country.  His  interesting  and  impressive 
words  should  be  deeply  considered  by  those  who  desire  a 
return  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  our  churches  now,  and  are 
willing  to  use  the  means  which  a  sovereign  God  has  ap- 
pointed to  secure  so  unspeakably  great  and  precious  a  favor 
from  Him. 

1.  "This  revival  has  made  its  appearance  in  various 
places,  without  any  extraordinary  means  to  produce  it.  The 
preaching,  the  singing,  the  praying,  have  been  the  same 
to  which  people  had  been  long  accustomed,  and  under 
which  they  had  hardened  to  a  great  degree ;  and  the  first 
symptoms  of  the  revival  have  been  a  praying  spirit  in  the 
few  pious  people  found  among  us.  They  somehow  got 
their  minds  impressed  with  a  sense  of  their  own  backslid- 
ing ;  with  a  sense  of  the  prevalence  of  vice,  infidelity  and 
impiety ;  and  an  unusual  compassionate  concern  for  the  salva- 
tion of  precious  souls  who  were  perishing  in  their  sins, 
and  for  the  prosperity  of  Zion.  They  prayed ;  they  en- 
deavored to  excite  their  friends  and  neighbors  to  pray ; 
they  formed  themselves  into  praying  societies,  that  they 
might  mutually  encourage  and  assist  each  other.  The  re- 
vival appears  to  he  granted  in  answer  to  prayer,  and  in  con- 
firmation of  that  gracious  truth,  that  God  has  'not  said  to 


62  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

the  house  of  Jacob,  seek  ye  me  in  vain,'  when  he  says  he 
4  will  be  inquired  of  by  the  house  of  Israel  to  do  it  for  them.' 

2.  "As  far  as  I  can  see,  there  appears  to  be  in  the  sub- 
jects of  this  work  a  deep  heart-humbling  sense  of  the 
great  unreasonableness,  abominable  nature,  pernicious  ef- 
fects and  deadly  consequences  of  sin  ;  and  the  absolute  un- 
worthiness  in  the  sinful  creature  of  the  smallest  crumb  of 
mercy  from  the  hand  of  a  holy  God.  There  appears  to  be 
in  them  a  deep  mourning  on  account  of  their  own  sins,  the 
sins  of  their  fellow  professors,  and  the  sins  of  the  careless 
and  profane,  and  particularly  for  the  base  sin  of  ingrati- 
tude to  God  for  his  many  mercies ;  and  conviction  of  the 
justice  of  God  in  condemning  and  punishing  his  offending 
creatures. 

3.  "  They  appear  to  have  a  lively  and  very  affecting  view 
of  the  infinite  condescension  and  love  of  God  the  Father, 
in  giving  his  eternal  and  only-begotten  Son  for  the  re- 
demption of  mankind ;  and  of  the  infinite  love  of  the  Re- 
deemer, manifested  in  the  great  and  gracious  work  of  re- 
demption ;  manifested  in  the  labors  and  sorrows  of  his  life 
and  of  his  death :  an  affecting  view  of  the  astonishing 
goodness  of  the  adorable  Trinity,  in  providing  and  apply- 
ing a  complete  atonement  for  the  sin  of  fallen  man,  and  a 
perfect  righteousness  for  his  justification.  And  all  this  in  a 
way  that  not  only  secures,  but  advances,  the  honors  of  God's 
law  and  government,  and  illustrates  his  justice,  holiness, 
truth  and  tender  mercies.  Jesus  Christ,  and  him  crucified, 
appears  to  be  the  all  in  all  to  the  subjects  of  this  re- 
vival, and  the  creature  nothing  and  less  than  nothing. 

4.  "They  seem  to  me  to  have  a  very  deep  and  affecting 


GENERAL   CHARACTER   OF   THE   REVIVAL.     G3 

sense  of  the  worth  of  precious  immortal  souls,  ardent  love 
to  them,  and  an  agonizing  concern  for  their  conviction,  con- 
version and  complete  salvation.  Afl  far  as  I  can  judge, 
they  are  pleading  for  this  with  strong,  fervent  desires,  with 
deep  humility,  with  faith  in  God's  promise  and  in  the 
merits  and  intercession  of  Jesus  Christ.  Perhaps  the  ar- 
dency of  their  love  sometimes  hurries  them  into  some  in- 
discretions which  excite  the  prejudices  of  those  for  whose 
salvation  they  are  pleading.  Men  are  imperfect  creatures; 
and  these,  if  I  may  be  allowed  the  expression,  appear  to  be 
the  generous  blunders  of  benevolence.  This  love,  this  com- 
passion, this  ardent  desire,  this  agonizing,  this  fervent 
pleading  for  the  salvation  of  sinful  men  and  for  Zion*> 
prosperity,  far  exceed  any  thing  I  have  ever  seen.  This 
love,  these  fervent  supplications,  are  not  confined  to  a  par- 
ticular spot  or  a  particular  party.  They  extend  to  and  in- 
clude men  of  every  description  :  Catholics  and  Protestants, 
Jews,  Mohammedans  and  Pagans.  The  most  savage  na- 
tions, who  are  sunk  almost  beneath  the  notice  of  oth< 
are  embraced  in  the  arms  of  their  benevolence.  Little  chil- 
dren lie  near  their  hearts ;  they  take  them  in  their  arms 
and  put  the  hands  of  their  benevolence  upon  them,  and 
plead  with  the  Father  of  mercies  to  bless  them.  0  thou 
Fountain  of  mercy,  give  me,  give  to  all,  this  spirit  of  love, 
of  grace  and  of  supplication ! 

5.  "A  considerable  number  of  individuals  appear  to  me 
to  be  greatly  reformed  in  their  moral-.  This  is  undoubtedly 
the  case  within  the  sphere  of  my  particular  acquaintance. 
Yea,  some  neighborhoods,  noted  for  their  vicious  and  profli- 
gate manners,  are  now  as  much  noted  for  their  piety  and 


G4  THE   GREAT    REVIVAL   OF    1S00. 

good  order.  Drunkards,  profane  swearers,  liars,  quarrel- 
some persons,  etc. ,  are  remarkably  reformed.  The  songs 
of  the  drunkard  are  exchanged  for  the  songs  of  Zion  ;  fer- 
vent prayer  succeeds  in  the  room  of  profane  oaths  and 
curses ;  the  lying  tongue  has  learned  to  speak  truth  in  the 
fear  of  God,  and  the  contentious  firebrand  is  converted  into 
a  lover  of  peace.  A  number  of  poor  backsliders  appear  to 
be  sensible,  that  '  it  is  an  evil  thing  and  a  bitter  that  they 
have  forsaken  the  Lord  their  God/  and  are  returning  to 
him  with  penitent  hearts,  going  and  weeping,  inquiring  the 
way  to  Zion  with  their  faces  thitherward,  and  we  hope 
are  joining  themselves  to  the  Lord  in  a  perpetual  cove- 
nant never  to  be  forgotten. 

6.  "A  number  of  families,  who  had  lived  apparently 
without  the  fear  of  God,  in  folly  and  in  vice,  without  any 
religious  instruction  or  any  proper  government,  are  now  re- 
duced to  order,  and  are  daily  joining  in  the  worship  of  God, 
reading  his  word,  singing  his  praises,  and  offering  up  their 
supplications  to  a  throne  of  grace.  Parents  who  formerly 
seemed  to  have  little  or  no  regard  for  the  souls  of  their 
children  are  now  anxiously  concerned  for  their  salvation, 
are  pleading  for  them  and  endeavoring  to  lead  them  to 
Christ  and  train  them  up  in  the  ways  of  piety  and  virtue. 
Masters  who  formerly  treated  their  servants  as  brutes  are 
now  earnestly  concerned  for  the  salvation  of  their  souls, 
and  using  means  to  promote  it. 

7.  "The  subjects  of  this  work  appear  to  be  very  sensible 
of  the  necessity  of  Sanctificatton  as  well  as  Justification, 
and  that  'without  holiness  no  man  can  see  the  Lord  ;'  to 
be  greatly  desirous  that  they  themselves  and  'all  that  name 


GENERAL   CHARACTER   OF   THE    REVIVAL.     65 

the  name  of  Christ  should  depart  from  iniquity,1  should 
recommend  the  religion  of  Jesus  to  the  consciences  and 
esteem  of  their  fellow  men,  that  the  light  of  their  holy  con- 
versation should  so  shine  before  men  that  they,  seeing 
their  good  works,  might  give  glory  to  God.  A  heaven  of 
perfect  purity  and  the  full  enjoyment  of  God  appears  to  be 
the  chief  and  ultimate  object  of  their  desire  and  pursuit. 

'  Now  I  have  given  you  my  reasons  for  concluding  the 
morning  is  come,  and  that  we  are  blessed  with  a  real  re- 
vival of  the  benign,  the  heaven-born  religion  of  Jesus 
Christ,  which  demands  our  grateful  acknowledgments  to 
God  the  Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost," 

The  General  Assembly  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in 
1803  appointed  a  committee,  consisting  of  Hev.  Messrs. 
Samuel  Miller,  Archibald  Alexander  and  James  Welsh, 
"  to  draw  up  a  statement  as  the  result  of  the  free  conversa- 
tion on  the  state  of  religion."  To  favorable  testimonies 
which  it  had  given  in  previous  years  it  added  the  following  : 
"The  Assembly  heard  at  more  than  usual  length,  and 
with  more  than  common  satisfaction,  the  accounts  received 
from  their  members  of  the  state  of  religion  within  the 
bounds  of  the  Presbyterian  Church.  Since  an  inquiry  of 
this  nature  has  become  a  part  of  the  annual  business  of  the 
Assembly,  it  may  be  confidently  asserted  that  no  result  was 
ever  presented  to  our  body  so  favorable  and  so  gratifying 
to  the  friends  of  truth  and  piety. 

:  There  is  scarcely  a  Presbytery  under  the  care  of  the 

Assembly  from  which  some  pleasing  intelligence  has  not 

been  announced,  and  from  some  of  them  communications 

have   been    made  which   so   illustriously  display  the    tri- 
5 


66  THE    GREAT    REVIVAL   OF    1S00. 

umphs  of  evangelical  truth  and  the  power  of  sovereign 
grace  as  cannot  but  fill  with  joy  the  hearts  of  all  who  love 
to  hear  of  the  prosperity  of  the  Redeemer's  kingdom. 

'  In  most  of  the  Northern  and  Eastern  Presbyteries,  re- 
vivals of  religion  of  a  more  or  less  general  nature  have 
taken  place.  In  these  revivals  the  work  of  Divine  grace 
has  proceeded,  with  a  few  exceptions,  in  the  usual  way. 
Sinners  have  been  convinced  and  converted  by  the  still 
small  voice  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  have  been  brought  out 
of  darkness  into  marvelous  light,  and  from  the  bondage  of 
corruption  into  the  glorious  liberty  of  the  children  of  God. 
Many  hundreds  have  been  added  to  the  Church  in  the 
course  of  the  last  year,  and  multitudes  of  those  who  had 
before  joined  themselves  to  die  Lord  have  experienced 
times  of  refreshing  and  consolation  from  his  presence. 

"  In  many  of  the  Southern  and  Western  Presbyteries  re- 
vivals more  extensive  and  of  a  more  extraordinary  nature 
have  taken  place. 

"It  would  be  easy  for  the  Assembly  to  select  some  very 
remarkable  instances  of  the  triumphs  of  Divine  grace 
which  were  exhibited  before  them  in  the  course  of  the  very 
interesting  narratives  presented  in  the  free  conversation — 
instances  of  the  most  malignant  opposers  of  vital  piety 
being  convinced  and  reconciled ;  of  some  learned,  active 
and  conspicuous  infidels  becoming  the  signal  monuments  of 
that  grace  which  once  they  despised,  and  various  circum- 
stances which  display  the  holy  efficacy  of  the  gospel. 
J>ut,  forbearing  to  enter  into  minute  details  on  this  subject, 
they  would  only  in  gen  sral  declare  that  in  the  course  of  the 
r  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  several  thousands 


GENERAL   CHARACTER   OF   THE    REVIVAL.     67 

within  the  bounds  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  have  been 
brought  to  embrace  the  gospel  of  Christ,  and  large  acces- 
sion of  zeal  and  of  strength  as  well  as  of  members  given  to 
his  people. 

"  The  Assembly  consider  it  as  worthy  of  particular  atten- 
tion, that  most  of  the  accounts  of  revivals  communicated 
to  them  stated  that  the  institution  of  praying  societies,  or 
seasons  of  special  prayer  to  God  for  the  outpouring  of  the 
Spirit,  generally  preceded  the  remarkable  displays  of 
Divine  grace  with  which  our  land  has  been  recently 
favored.  In  most  cases,  preparatory  to  signal  effusions  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  the  pious  have  been  stirred  up  to  cry 
fervently  and  importunately  that  God  would  appear  to 
vindicate  his  own  cause.  The  Assembly  see  in  this  a  con- 
firmation of  the  word  of  God,  and  an  ample  encouragement 
of  the  prayers  and  hopes  of  the  pious  for  future  and  more 
extensive  manifestations  of  Divine  power.  And  they  trust 
that  the  churches  under  their  care,  while  they  see  cause  of 
abundant  thankfulness  for  this  dispensation,  will  also  per- 
ceive that  it  presents  new  motives  to  zeal  and  fervor  in 
application  to  that  throne  of  grace  from  which  every  good 
and  perfect  gift  cometli. 

"The  Assembly  also  observed  with  great  pleasure  that 
the  desire  for  spreading  the  gospel  among  the  destitute 
inhabitants  on  our  frontiers,  among  the  blacks  and  among 
the  savage  tribes  on  our  borders  has  been  rapidly  increas- 
ing during  the  last  year  in  various  parts  of  our  Church. 
The  Assembly  take  notice  of  this  circumstance  with  the 
more  satisfaction,  as  it  not  only  affords  a  pleasing  presage 
of  the  spread  of  the  gospel,  but  also  furnishes  agreeable 


THE    GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1S00. 

evidence  of  the  genuineness  and  the  benign  tendency  of 
that  spirit  which  God  has  been  pleased  to  pour  out  upon 
his  people. 

"On  the  whole,  the  Assembly  cannot  but  declare  with 
joy,  and  with  most  cordial  congratulations  to  the  churches 
under  their  care,  that  the  state  and  prospects  of  vital  re- 
ligion  in  our  country  are  more  favorable  and  encouraging 
than  at  any  period  within  the  last  forty  years." 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

THIS  REVIVAL  PART  OF  A    WORLl 
OF  THE  KINGDOM  OF  CA 


rPHE  h  which  h        een  .  :"  the  Great 

of  U  relaM  the  Unit       3     :es  of  America, 

would  fail  to  make  a  proper  impression  upon  the  minds  of 
Christiana  did  I  not  remark  that  it  i  -imply  an  Amer- 

ican moveir  It  was  part  of  an  immense  advance  of  the 

kingdom  of  the  Lord  Je~  -rist  which  can  be  distinctly 
traced  amidst  the  populati  -nd  affairs  of  all  the  import- 
ant nations  of  mankind. 

In  E        n  Asia  this  period  was  one  of  a  new  interest  in 
the  intellectual  and  moral  improvement  of  the  native  race 
The  three  W  Richard.  E  and  Arthur  (the 

latter  afterward  the  famou-   I  Ae  of  W 
menced  a  new  era  in  the  administration  of 
India   Compar.        Infanticide  was  prohi  by  law 

The  con         :-e  of  the   E       pean  conquerors  was 
re  :he  Parliamentary  investigation  into  the  old 

ab  :»f  the  se:        s  of  the  Compar.        I:  was  not  long 

before  Lord  Minto  and  the  Marquis  of  Hastings  were  stim- 
ulate! to  introduce    European  education.    The    Hindoo 

8  hool  Sod  3  hool  Book 

md  otl  Uent  institutions,  prepared  the  way 


70  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

for  the  apostolic  labors  of  British  chaplains  and  teachers 
like  Claudius  Buchanan,  David  Brown  and  Henry  Martyn, 
and  for  the  eminent  missionaries,  Ward,  Carey,  Marshman, 
Cran,  Gordon,  Lee  and  others  like  them. 

China,  then  embraced  within  the  influences  of  the  same 
European  monopolies,  shared  in  the  sympathies,  and  in  a 
limited  degree,  especially  among  the  colonists  in  the  Indian 
Archipelago,  in  the  missionary  efforts,  of  the  period.  The 
Bible  was  translated,  though  imperfectly,  into  Chinese  by 
Lassar  and  Marshman  in  India,  and  by  Dr.  Robert  Mor- 
rison, the  pioneer  Protestant  missionary  to  China  proper, 
who  went  to  Canton  by  way  of  America  in  1807. 

4 'The  isles "  of  ancient  prophecy,  Java,  Sumatra,  Bor- 
neo, and  others  of  the  Indian  Archipelago,  were  brought 
more  widely  and  thoroughly  under  the  influence  of  the 
Dutch  than  ever  before ;  and  zealous  missionaries  were 
sent  to  the  native  races,  whose  labors,  though  ignored  or 
contemptuously  spoken  of  by  British  writers,  were  blessed 
to  the  conversion  of  many  of  the  people,  and  the  establish- 
ment of  Christian  usages  and  schools  among  them.  "The 
fifth  continent,"  Australia,  was  colonized  by  being  made  a 
penal  settlement  for  English  convicts.  Capt.  Cook  intro- 
duced our  domestic  animals  and  vegetables  into  New  Zea- 
land and  other  islands.  Thus  these  vast  regions  were  pre- 
pared to  see  "upon  the  tops  of  the  mountains"  the  glori- 
ous light  of  Christianity. 

The  Turkish  Empire,  already  shaken  by  successive  wars 
with  Venice,  Hungary,  Russia  and  Austria,  was  further 
humbled  by  those  with  France  and  England,  and  sunk  to 
a  position  of  inferiority  and  submission  from  which  it  has 


PART   OF    A    WOULD- WIDE    ADVANCE.  71 

never  risen.  From  this  time  is  dated  its  adoption  of  the 
military  system,  the  arts  and  the  education  of  the  Christian 
powers  of  the  West* 

The  condition  of  Palestine  and  the  Jewish  race  awakened 
efforts  to  restore  to  them  the  knowledge  of  the  long-rejected 
Messiah.  In  1809  was  organized  the  London  Society  for 
Promoting  Christianity  among  the  Jews. 

Africa  was  girded  with  new  influences.  The  British  in 
1795  began  to  regenerate  the  regions  about  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope.  In  1799,  the  noble  Vanderkemp  commenced, 
with  his  companions,  his  useful  labors  among  the  Kaffirs  and 
Hottentots.  In  1787,  the  British  purchased  Sierra  Leone 
as  a  refuge  for  liberated  slaves,  and  in  a  few  years  made  it 
a  crown  colony.  In  1796,  the  explorations  of  Bruce,  and 
in  1799  those  of  Mungo  Park,  for  the  head- waters  of 
the  Nile,  were  given  to  the  world.  Egyptian  lethargy  and 
superstition  were  effectually  shaken  by  the  French  and 
English  invasions.  The  Moorish  States  were  humbled  by 
the  wars  with  France,  England  and  the  United  States. 

South  America  was  moved,  by  the  contagion  of  civil  and 
religious  liberty  in  its  twin  continent  of  the  North,  to  throw 
off  the  galling  yoke  of  Spanish  despotism  and  superstition, 
and  a  series  of  republics  sprang  forth  which  for  a  time  as- 
pired to  be  our  rivals  in  the  benefits  offered  to  mankind. 

All  Europe  was  an  arena  in  which  ancient  thrones  were 
hurled  to  the  ground  and  the  priestly  chains  about  the 
human  intellect  and  conscience  were  violently  broken  and 
cast  away.  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  in  the  name  of  an  apostle 
of  social  progress  and  the  rights  of  man,  swept  from  one 
extreme  to  the  other  of  the  continent.     The  first  terrible 


72  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

outbursts  of  infidel  triumph  and  pride  were  succeeded  by  an 
awakening  of  Christian  Churches  to  reformation  of  abuses 
and  to  the  duty  of  publishing  the  gospel  to  all  nations.  The 
Netherlands  Missionary  Society  was  formed  in  1797,  at 
Rotterdam;  the  Berlin  Missionary  Society  in  1800.  The 
Basle  Missionary  Society  was  reared  in  1817,  as  a  monu- 
ment of  the  salvation  of  the  city  from  the  peril  of  a  bom- 
bardment. In  the  first  years  of  this  century  a  score  of 
prominent  societies  of  a  missionary  and  educational  cha- 
racter were  established  in  Western  Europe.  Men  of  great 
zeal  and  success,  like  Vanderkemp  among  the  Kaffirs  and 
Gutzlaff  on  the  coast  of  China,  were  sent  forth  by  them,  or 
went  abroad  by  the  aid  of  funds  furnished  by  British  Soci- 
eties. Republics  were  established  in  Northern  Italy,  and 
Home  itself  was  made  one  in  1802.  The  Pope's  power  was 
draggled  in  the  dust  as  it  had  never  been  before.  In  Ger- 
many, the  University  of  Berlin  was  made  an  institution 
of  the  first  rank ;  the  Lutheran  and  Reformed  Churches 
were  fused  under  the  name  of  the  "Evangelical  Church. " 
Monarchs  themselves  seemed  moved  by  a  new  spirit.  After 
the  battle  of  Leipzic,  the  Protestant  king  of  Prussia,  the 
Greek  Catholic  emperor  of  Russia,  and  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic emperor  of  Austria  united  together  in  what  they 
styled  "The  Holy  Alliance,"  and  called  God  to  witness 
that  henceforth  they  would  only  reign  for  the  happiness  of 
their  subjects  and  the  triumph  of  the  Christian  religion. 

Great  Britain  was  the  scene  of  an  equal  onward  move- 
ment in  the  kingdom  of  Immanuel.  The  success  of  tho 
American  Revolution  was  in  reality  the  success  of  the  cause 
of  popular  liberty,  of  the  principles  of  Pitt  and  Burke,  the 


PART    OF    A    WORLD-WIDE    ADVANCE.  73 

beginning  of  that  recognition  of  the  political  and  religious 
rights  of  men  of  every  rank  and  creed  which  has  brought 
Great  Britain  to-day  to  the  verge  of  democracy.  That  of 
France — a  terrible  rebound  of  society  from  the  rule  and 
misrule  of  Popery — for  a  time  spread  wild  and  fanatical  in- 
fidelity among  the  middle  and  lower  classes.  But  this  was 
part  of  the  stimulating  cause  of  the  more  fervent  preach- 
ing of  the  gospel  by  Rowland  Hill,  John  Newrton  and  many 
other  zealous  men,  and  of  the  formation  of  several  of  those 
great  religious  societies  wdiich  have  been  the  chief  honor 
of  modern  Britain.  Of  these  the  British  and  Foreign 
Bible  Society  is  the  most  important.  "  The  formation  of 
this  Society,"  says  Anderson  in  the  Annals  of  the  English 
Bible,  " produced  an  effect  altogether  unprecedented;  in- 
deed, the  mere  announcement  ran  throughout  every  denom- 
ination in  the  kingdom,  and  conveyed  an  impulse  at  once 
the  most  powerful  and  the  most  extensive  under  which  the 
Christians  of  this  country  had  ever  come.'  The  Society 
originated,  in  1804,  in  the  proposition  of  two  Welsh  minis- 
ters, Thomas  Charles  and  Joseph  Hughes,  to  furnish  Bibles, 
in  their  native  tongue,  to  the  people  who  spoke  it,  and  to 
other  races.  The  Baptists  formed  their  Missionary  Society 
in  1792.  The  London  Society  was  organized  in  1794;  the 
Religious  Tract  Society  in  1799 ;  the  Episcopal  Church 
Missionary  Society  for  Africa  and  the  East  in  ]800.  The 
Wesleyan  foreign  missions,  commenced  in  1769  in  North 
America,  in  1792  were  extended  to  Sierra  Leone  ;  in  1796  to 
the  Foullahs  in  Africa;  in  1799  to  Gibraltar;  in  1800  to 
Madras,  in  India.  Indeed,  the  Spirit  of  God  communicated 
a  universal  interest  in  the  condition  of  the  degraded  and 


74  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

vicious  classes  of  society,  and  in  the  dark  and  helpless  state 
of  the  heathen  and  Mohammedan  nations,  so  that  the  whole 
Christian  world  started  into  efforts  to  translate  into  all  lan- 
guages, to  circulate  and  to  preach  the  word  of  the  living 
God.  All  branches  of  the  Christian  Church  were  power- 
fully quickened.  So  wonderful,  indeed,  was  the  life  and 
energy  communicated  to  some  of  them  that  they  have 
assumed  their  influence  to  have  been  that  which  moved  the 
rest.* 

But  we  must  look  far  higher.  The  Great  Revival  of  1800 
was  an  element  in  the  beginning  of  the  grandest  advance 
of  Christianity  since  the  Reformation  of  Martin  Luther. 
It  was  the  impulse  to  the  universal  scattering  abroad  of  the 
seed  which  had  been  ripening  since  the  time  of  Luther, 

*  It  is  sometimes  claimed  by  Baptists  that  the  establishment  of 
their  Society  in  1792  was  the  origin  of  the  modern  missionary  ef- 
forts of  other  Churches.  This  is  without  foundation.  The  Rev.  Dr. 
F.  A.  Cox,  in  his  History  of  the  Baptist  Missionary  Society  (Vol.  I. 
p.  4),  though  himself  a  Baptist,  quotes  one  of  its  early  addresses 
which  declares  that  "it  was  proposed  at  first,  if  no  opening  was 
found  for  a  Baptist  mission,  to  have  requested  the  Presbyterian  and 
Moravian  brethren,  who  had  been  already  employed  in  laboring 
among  the  heathen,  to  accept  some  assistance  from  our  subscrip- 
tions ;  for  by  the  leave  of  the  God  of  heaven,  we  were  determined 
to  do  something  towards  propagating  his  gospel  in  heathen  lands." 
There  were  missions,  of  long  standing  and  considerable  success, 
sustained  by  Reformed,  Presbyterian,  Lutheran  and  Moravian 
Churches,  in  numerous  heathen  fields,  in  various  parts  of  the  world. 

The  Great  Revival,  in  the  United  States  was  mainly  Calvinistio 
in  its  character,  but  it  gave  a  powerful  impulse  to  Methodism  in 
some  parts  of  the  country. 


PART   OF    A    WORLD-WIDE   ADVANCE.  75 

Calvin  and  Zwinglc.  It  was  a  most  manifest  introduction 
of  the  Divine  achievement  which  may  eternally  give  lustre 
to  this  nineteenth  centunj — the  commencement  of  those 
grand,  universal  and  final  effusions  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
which  shall  convert  the  whole  of  this  lost  world  to  God. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

POWERFUL  EFFECTS  OF  THE  GREAT  REVIVAL  UPON 
OUR  CHURCH-LIFE— ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  SEV- 
ERAL   BOARDS. 

TT  is  most  interesting  to  trace  the  influence  of  the  Great 

Revival  in  the  development  of  the  several  departments 

of  labor  and  influence  for  good  which  we  now  denominate 

the  Boards  of  the  Presbyterian  Church. 

First  let  us  look  at  "Home  Missions."    The  first  thought 

of  an  awakened  soul  is  to  do  what  Jesus  commanded  the 

demoniac  out  of  whom  he  cast  the  legion  of  devils  :   "  Go 

home  to  thy  friends,  and  tell  them  how  great  things  the 

Lord  hath  done  for  thee,  and  hath  had  compassion  on 

thee.'      It  is  most  worthy  of  observation  that  ministers 

were   powerfully  attracted   even  from   other  and   distant 

States  to  the  scenes  of  the  great  outpourings  of  the  Holy 

Spirit.     Thence  they  returned,  publishing  as  they  went  the 

glad  tidings,  and  starting  other  communities  to  pray  for  the 

same  wondrous  gifts  of  mercy.     "As  when  the  melting  fire 

burneth,  the  fire  causeth  the  waters  to  boil,  to  make  Thy 

name  known  to  Thine  adversaries,  that  the  nations  may 

tremble  at  Thy  presence."     Some  of  the  letters  written  by 

the  ministry  thus  engaged  narrate  their  manifold  labors, 

and  mention  the  exhaustion  of  their  physical  strength  by 
76 


ITS   EFFECTS   UPON   OUR   CHURCH-LIFE.       77 

incessant  preaching  and  conversation  with  the  impenitent 
and  inquirers.  The  General  Assembly  had  long  maintained 
systematic  efforts  "  towards  supplying  the  destitute  portions 
of  our  country  with  the  preaching  of  the  gospel.'  But  at 
this  time  the  duty  took  a  more  enlarged  and  efficient  form. 
The  Rev.  Dr.  Green  [Historical  Sketch  of  Domestic  and 
Foreign  Missions  in  the  Presbyterian  Church)  says,  "In 
1802  an  important  alteration  took  place  in  the  manner  of 
conducting  the  missionary  business.  It  had  now  become 
so  extensive"  as  to  require  "a  Standing  Committee  of 
Missions  to  act  throughout  the  year,'  "clothed  with  such 
powers  as  were  then  deemed  sufficient.'  This  committee 
made,  in  1803,  its  First  Annual  Report  "to  the  General 
Assembly. ' '  The  series  thus  instituted  has  been  continued 
till  this  time.  The  Standing  Committee  on  Missions  was 
increased  in  the  number  of  its  members  and  in  its  powers 
in  1816,  and  the  name  changed  to  "The  Board  of  Mis- 
sions." The  late  New  School  branch  of  the  Church, 
which  had  carried  on  its  Home  Mission  operations  through 
the  agency  of  the  American  Home  Missionary  Society  (an- 
other of  the  fruits  of  this  great  movement),  established,  in 
1847,  its  own  work  under  the  designation  of  "The  Stand- 
ing Committee  on  Home  Missions/'  "The  Board  of 
Home  Missions"  of  our  reunited  Presbyterian  Church  is 
therefore  a  great  and  precious  monument  of  that  outpour- 
ing of  God's  Spirit  which  compelled  the  formation  of  a  per- 
manent organization,  in  behalf  of  the  General  Assembly, 
to  care  for  the  multitude  of  destitute  flocks,  to  send  the 
gospel  to  the  frontiers,  and  to  be  the  agency  through  which 
the   Church  should  do  her  part  toward  filling  the  whole 


78  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

land  with  the  means  of  grace  through  the  preaching  of  the 
word. 

Our  cause  of  ''Foreign  Missions"  is  also  directly  con- 
nected with  the  Great  Revival  of  1800.  The  deepest  pity 
is  excited,  in  the  breasts  of  those  who  know  the  joy  of  de- 
liverance from  the  bondage  of  hell,  for  those  fellow  immor- 
tals who  sit  in  the  deepest  darkness,  and  who  are  most 
helpless  beneath  the  ancient  fetters  of  Satanic  dominion. 
It  is  wonderful  to  mark  the  instant  reaching  forth  of  tender 
sympathy,  in  that  Revival,  toward  the  poor  Indian  tribes. 
There  are  no  people  whose  desolate  wretchedness — plun- 
dered as  they  are,  slaughtered,  crushed  by  the  weight  of 
vices  which  often  white  men  have  taught  them,  and 
poisoned  by  diseases  which  white  men  have  communicated — 
more  profoundly  excites  Christian  sorrow  and  commisera- 
tion, and  to  whom  the  Church,  when  warmed  afresh  by 
the  Spirit  of  the  merciful  Redeemer,  more  anxiously  de- 
sires to  convey  the  balm  of  peace  through  his  atoning  blood. 
The  Presbyterian  Church  has  for  more  than  a  century 
carried  on  missionary  operations  with  more  system,  con- 
tinuousness  and  zeal  than  any  other.  In  1741  the  Presby- 
tery of  New  York  sent  forth  Azariah  Horton,  and  in  1744 
David  Brainerd,  supported  by  the  "  Society  in  Scotland  for 
Propagating  Christian  Knowledge,'  to  preach  to  the  In- 
dians in  New  Jersey  and  Eastern  Pennsylvania,  and  in 
1770,  Charles  Beatty  and  George  Duffield  to  preach  to 
those  upon  the  Muskingum  river  in  Ohio. 

The  revival  period  about  1800  gave  new  life  to  such  mis- 
sions. The  New  York  Missionary  Society  was  formed  in 
1796,  chiefly  through  the  efforts  of  the  Rev.  Br.  John  M. 


ITS    EFFECTS    UPON    OUR   CHURCH-LIFE.       79 

Mason,  one  of  the  great  preachers  of  the  age.  It  looked 
beyond  our  continent,  and  across  the  Pacific.  In  an  An- 
nual Keport,  under  Dr.  Mason's  signature  as  Corresponding 
Secretary,  in  1803,  it  speaks  of  the  breaches  now  made  "  in 
the  once  undisturbed  strongholds  of  Satan,"  and  says,  "a 
little  more,  and  irruptions  will  be  made  in  his  securer  pos- 
sessions, not  perhaps  to  be  resisted  till  the  light  of  the 
glorious  gospel  of  Christ  shall  beam  on  the  waters  of  the 
Pacific  ocean,  and  his  blessed  name  shall  resound  from  her 
shores."  He  hoped  some  of  the  converted  Indians  might 
be  the  means  of  carrying  "westward  into  Asia  the  light 
of  life  and  immortality."  He  little  dreamed  that,  when  the 
Chinese  would  be  brought  by  God  to  seek  here  that  light, 
many  of  our  own  people  would  try  to  drive  them  back  to 
darkness  again.  The  Synod  of  Pittsburg,  at  its  first  meet- 
ing, upon  its  organization  by  the  act  of  the  General  Assem- 
bly, in  September,  1802,  solemnly  resolved  the  body  itself 
into  a  society  to  be  styled  u  The  Western  Missionary  So- 
ciety," whose  object  was  "  to  diffuse  the  knowledge  of  the 
gospel  among  the  inhabitants  of  the  new  settlements,  the 
Indian  tribes,  and,  if  need  be,  among  some  of  the  interior 
inhabitants  where  they  are  not  able  to  support  the  gospel." 
There  was  constituted  at  the  same  time  a  "Board  of 
Trust,"  consisting  of  seven  members,  to  manage  the  mis- 
sionary concerns  of  the  Synod.  This  was  the  beginning  of 
the  series  of  missionary  efforts  which  terminated  in  the  or- 
ganization of  the  "Board  of  Foreign  Missions"  by  the 
General  Assembly  of  1837,  which  transferred  the  work  be- 
gun in  Pittsburg  to  the  city  of  New  York.  The  Secretary 
of  the  Western  Foreign  Missionary  Society,  the  Hon.  Wal- 


80  THE   GREAT    REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

ter  Lowric,  who  had  formerly  been  a  Senator  of  the  United 
States  from  the  State  of  Pennsylvania,  and  was  elected 
Secretary  of  the  new  Board,  was  one  of  the  converts  of  the 
Great  Revival.  Through  a  long  and  laborious  life  he  in- 
fused the  fervor  of  that  Revival  into  all  his  correspondence, 
toils  and  influence,  and  made  its  power  felt  in  the  Presby- 
terian foreign  missions  which  sprang  up  in  every  continent. 

We  may  next  observe  how  the  Great  Revival  was  related 
to  "Ministerial  Education." 

A  powerful  outpouring  of  the  Holy  Ghost  upon  a  com- 
munity or  land  necessarily  compels  many  of  the  men  con- 
verted to  leave  their  nets  and  their  seats  at  the  receipt  of 
customs,  and  follow  in  the  footsteps  and  labors  of  their 
Master.  It  compels  those  who  cannot  go  forth  to  preach, 
to  feel  that  a  closely  related  duty  to  our  perishing  race  lies 
upon  them,  and  cannot  be  avoided — that  is,  that  if  they 
cannot  #0,  they  must  send  others  in  their  place.  Thus  its 
era  is  commemorated  by  permanent  monuments  in  the  form 
of  collegiate  and  theological  institutions,  and  by  the  estab- 
lishment of  ecclesiastical  organizations  to  multiply  and  edu- 
cate candidates  for  the  ministry. 

The  revival  of  1730-50  was  the  means  in  God's  hands  of 
rousing  the  Presbyterian  Church  to  feel  the  necessity  of  a 
college  in  the  Middle  States.  Hence  the  origin  of  that  at 
Princeton  in  1746.  Its  great  object  was,  as  the  Synod  of 
New  York  in  1754  informed  the  General  Assembly  of  the 
Church  of  Scotland,  to  endeavor  to  make  "provisions  for 
many  shepherdless  flocks,"  and  for  those  "  that  come  hun- 
dreds of  miles  crying  to  them  for  some  to  break  the  bread 
of  life  among  them,  and  are  often  obliged  to  return  in  tears 


ITS   EFFECTS   UPON   OUR   CHURCH-LIFE.      81 

with  little  or  no  relief  by  reason  of  the  scarcity  of  minis- 
ters."    u  And  were  the  poor  Indian  savages  sensible  of 
their  own  case,  they  would  join  in  the  cry,  and  beg  for 
more  missionaries  to  be  sent  to  propagate  the  religion  of 
Jesus  among  them." 

The  Great  Revival  of  1800  created  an  immense  demand 
for  ministers.  The  Synod  of  Virginia  in  1798  enlarged 
Liberty  Hall  into  Washington  Academj*.  In  Kentucky 
and  Tennessee  the  rising  interest  gave  existence  to  Wash- 
ington College  in  the  year  1796,  and  when  a  few  years  later 
scores  of  new  congregations  demanded  pastors,  which  could 
not  be  at  once  supplied,  it  led,  in  the  end,  to  the  intro- 
duction of  uneducated  and  incapable  men  into  the  pulpit, 
and  to  the  painful  schism  of  the  "  Cumberland  Presbyterian 
Church '  from  the  parent  body.  In  Western  Pennsyl- 
vania it  begat  Jefferson  and  Washington  Colleges,  only  a 
few  miles  apart,  and  somewhat  later,  Allegheny  College  ; 
and  in  New  York,  in  179G,  Union  College,  which  has 
always  been  essentially  Presbyterian,  and  in  1812,  Hamil- 
ton College.*  But  the  most  marked  advance  in  Ministerial 
Education  was  the  determination  of  the  General  Assembly 
in  1810,  after  much  discussion  for  some  years  previously  as 
to  the  form  and  number  of  such  institutions  required,  to 
erect  a  Theological  Seminary,  and  it  was  carefully  an- 
nounced "that,  as  filling  the  Church  with  a  learned  and 
able  ministry,  without  a  corresponding  portion  of  real  piet.y, 
would  be  a  curse  to  the  world  and  an  offence  to  God  and 

•  In  Ohio,  Miarni  University,  at  Oxford,  "was  established  in  1S03, 
Ohio  University,  at  Athens,  in  1802,  each  aided  by  public  grants  of 
land,  but  Presbyterian  in  their  origin. 
G 


82  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

his  people,"  the  Seminary  should  endeavor  tl  to  train  up 
persons  for  the  ministry  -who  shall  be  lovers  as  well  as  de- 
fenders of  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus,  friends  of  revivals  of 
religion,  and  a  blessing  to  the  Church  of  God."  The  insti- 
tution in  the  year  1812  was  located  at  Princeton,  N.  J. 

One  of  the  incitements  to  the  establishment  of  the 
Princeton  Seminary  was  the  success  of  that  in  a  sister 
Presbyterian  body  which  had  been  conceived  by  Dr.  John 
M.  Mason,  in  1796,  and  put  in  operation  in  1805.  The 
latter  was  the  model  also  of  the  earliest  Congregational 
Seminary  at  Andover,  Mass.     {Memoirs  of  Dr.  Mason.) 

It  was  but  a  short  time  until  other  seminaries,  to  train  the 
young  men  pressing  toward  the  ministry  and  needed  for  the 
fields  everywhere  ripe  for  the  sickle,  sprung  up  in  other 
portions  of  the  country.  Auburn,  for  Central  and  Western 
New  York ;  the  Western  Seminary,  for  the  large  Pres- 
byterian population  of  which  Pittsburg  is  the  centre ;  Co- 
lumbia, for  the  Synods  of  South  Carolina  and  Georgia; 
Lane,  for  the  region  centring  at  Cincinnati ;  Union  Semi- 
nary, for  the  Synods  of  Virginia  and  North  Carolina  ;  Dan- 
ville, for  Kentucky  and  the  country  south  of  it ;  the  In- 
diana Seminary,  which  after  various  transmutations  has 
found  a  permanent  home  at  Chicago;  and  the  New  York 
Union  Seminary, — all,  with  some  others  not  aiming  so 
high,  were  planted  successively  within  the  seventeen  years 
beginning  with  1818. 

The  increase  of  candidates  for  the  ministry  all  over  the 
land  compelled  the  adoption  of  a  general  system  to  collect 
money  to  aid  them  and  to  superintend  the  cause  of  Edu- 
cation. 


ITS   EFFECTS    UPON    OUR   CHURCH-LIFE.       83 

In  1806,  the  Assembly,  as  it  was  said,  in  view  of  the 
obvious  and  melancholy  fact  that  the  candidates  for  the  gos- 
pel ministry  within  the  bounds  of  the  Presbyterian  Church 
at  present  fall  very  far  short  of  the  demand  made  for  their 
services,  "adopted  a  plan  for  the  general  and  harmonious 
action  of  the  Presbyteries  in  the  employment  of  certain 
means  to  increase  their  number,  raise  funds  for  their  sup- 
port, and  inspect  their  education.  This  plan  was  followed 
until  1819,  when  the  Assembly  established  a  "General 
Board  of  Education.'  The  principles  of  this  Board  are 
essentially  those  which  the  Church  has  matured  in  the 
present  form,  which  was  adopted  at  the  reunion  two  years 
ago,  enriched  with  the  suggestions  of  the  experience  of 
each  of  the  bodies. 

In  the  formation  of  this  Board  those  who  twenty  years 
afterwards  parted  into  the  two  temporal  branches  of  the 
Church  were  cordially  agreed.  The  godly  and  zealous 
Drs.  James  Richards,  William  Hill,  James  P.  Wilson,  E. 
S.  Ely  and  Rev.  James  Patterson,  all  of  them  men  eminently 
blessed  in  their  labors,  worked  to  accomplish  it  with  the 
faithful  and  scholarly  Drs.  Ashbel  Green,  Archibald  Alex- 
ander, Samuel  Miller,  J.  J.  Janeway,  William  Neill  and 
Rev.  Francis  Herron. 

This  more  complete  shape  was  a  result  of  the  secondary 
revival  impulse  which  about  that  period  brought  into  action 
the  American  Bible  Society,  the  American  Tract  Society, 
the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Mis- 
sions, the  American  Colonization  Society,  the  American 
Education  Society,  and  other  beneficent  institutions. 

While  the  Great  Revival  of  1800  created  a  demand  for 


84  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

ministers,  and  excited  the  Church  to  organize  means  to  in- 
crease the  number  of  them,  it  completed  what  was  neces- 
sary to  supply  them,  by  mightily  affecting  the  young  people 
of  the  land.  It  led  a  great  number  of  young  men  into  the 
ministry.  It  wrought  wonders  in  some  of  the  few  acad- 
omies  and  colleges  then  in  existence.  At  Princeton  its  bless- 
ed influences  were  missed  through  the  dispersion  of  the 
students  by  a  fire  which  burned  the  college  building.  The 
youth  of  the  institutions  in  the  West  and  South  were 
bathed  with  its  powerful  influences.  The  ministers  in  those 
regions  labored  with  special  zeal  for  the  conversion  of  the 
young.  And  they  pressed  into  the  ministry  and  made  pro- 
visions to  educate,  for  the  supply  of  the  gospel  to  the  mul- 
titudes awakened  by  the  Great  Revival,  the  most  fervent 
and  capable  of  the  young  men  who  were  brought  by  it  into 
the  Church.  The  Rev.  Dr.  McMillan  alone,  according  to 
Dr.  Matthew  Brown,  of  Jefferson  College,  was  the  instru- 
ment of  fitting  for  the  ministry,  in  his  academy,  one  hun- 
dred men,  many  of  whom  were  eminently  useful.  Speaking 
of  the  fellow-laborers  of  McMillan,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Glllett 
[Histoid  of  the  Presbyterian  Church)  sa3Ts:  "  Rarely,  if 
ever,  in  the  history  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  this 
country  has  any  of  its  missionary  fields  been  occupied  by  a 
more  able  and  devoted  band  of  pioneer  laborers  than  that 
which  was  covered  by  the  Old  Redstone  Presbytery.  Many 
of  them  were  rarely  gifted,  and  would  have  done  honor  to 
the  most  exalted  station  ;  and  the  influence  which  they  ex- 
erted upon  the  great  Western  field,  then  opening  with  in- 
viting promise  to  Eastern  emigration,  cannot  be  estimated. 
They  wanted,  and  made  provision  to  secure,  strong  men, 


ITS   EFFECTS   UPON    OUB   CHURCH-LIFE.      85 

and  all  who  joined  them  seemed  to  be  made  partakers  of 
their  spirit.' :  Dr.  II.  Humphrey  thus  describes  the  effects 
of  this  wonderful  wrork  of  grace  at  Yale  College  :  In  "  the 
spring  and  summer  of  1802  the  revival,  in  its  triumphant 
progress  on  the  right  hand  and  the  left,  reached  Yale  Col- 
lege ;  and  there  it  came  with  such  powTer  as  had  never  been 
witnessed  within  those  walls  before.  It  was  in  the  Fresh- 
man year  of  my  owTn  class.  It  wTas  like  a  mighty  rushing 
wind.  The  whole  college  was  shaken.  It  seemed  for  a 
time  as  if  the  whole  mass  of  the  students  would  press  into 
the  kingdom.  It  was  the  Lord's  doing,  and  marvelous  in 
all  eyes.  Oh  what  a  blessed  change  !  As  the  fruit  of  this 
revival,  so  memorable  in  the  history  of  the  institution,  fifty- 
eight  were  added  to  the  college  church,  and  others,  I  know 
not  how  many,  joined  the  churches  at  home.  It  was  a  glo- 
rious reformation.  It  put  a  new  face  upon  the  college.  It 
sent  a  thrill  of  joy  and  thanksgiving  far  and  wide  into  the 
hearts  of  its  friends  who  had  been  praying  that  the  waters 
of  salvation  might  be  poured  into  the  fountain  from  which 
so  many  streams  were  annually  sent  out.  The  triennial 
catalogue  shows  that  for  many  years  there  had  been  but 
very  few7  in  the  seminary  preparing  for  the  pulpit.  In  the 
four  preceding  classes,  only  thirteen  names  of  ministers 
stand  against  sixty-nine  in  the  next  four  years — nearly,  if 
not  quite,  all  of  them  brought  in  by  the  Great  Revival." 

Such  must  be  the  logical  effects  of  a  genuine  revival  of 
religion.  Such  they  have  been  in  the  past — such  they 
must  be  now.  Only  the  Holy  Spirit  can  constrain  parents 
to  give  their  sons  to  go  they  know  not  where,  preaching  the 
gospel  to  mankind,  or  to  take  of  the  substance  which  they 


86  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

are  laying  up  for  their  heirs,  and  give  it  to  educate  the  sons 
of  strangers  for  that  end.  No  motives  but  those  with 
which  the  Holy  Spirit  moves  the  souls  of  men  can  draw 
gifted  and  energetic  young  men  from  the  overwhelming 
attractions  which  the  world  has  to  offer,  and  lead  them 
heartily  to  consecrate  themselves  to  the  comparatively  toil- 
some, ill-paid  and  anxious  office  of  the  ministry.  He  alone 
can  inspire  them  with  patience  and  diligence  in  the  tedious 
prosecution  of  long  years  of  needful  preparatory  study. 
And  only  a  general  pervading  influence  of  the  Spirit  of  God 
can  enlist  the  membership  of  the  Church  in  the  proper 
support  of  a  department  of  her  work  which  has  so  little 
that  is  exciting  or  romantic  in  its  details,  to  catch  the  im- 
agination, and  to  stimulate  pecuniary  contributions.  Thus 
it  is  that  the  cause  of  Ministerial  Education  is  one  of  the 
first  to  feel  the  influences  of  a  genuine  outpouring  of  the 
Holy  Spirit ;  and  these  influences  it  soon  sends  streaming, 
in  an  energized  generation  of  ministers,  through  every 
branch  and  fibre  of  the  Church's  outward  life. 

The  principles  of  the  work  of  our  "Board  of  Publica- 
tion" began  to  receive  practical  application  during  the 
Great  Revival. 

A  Jewish  funeral,  in  a  time  of  war  with  the  heathen 
Moab,  carried  out  a  dead  man.  Surprised  by  a  band  of 
enemies,  they  cast  the  body  into  the  tomb  of  a  prophet  by 
whom  God  had  long  before  wrought  many  mighty  miracles. 
AVhen  the  corpse  touched  the  bones  of  Elisha  he  revived 
and  stood  upon  his  feet ! 

Centuries  ago,  Augustine,  Calvin,  Luther,  were  laid  in 
their   tombs.     Edwards,    Baxter,    Bunyan,   have   gone   to 


ITS    EFFECTS    UPON    OUR    CHURCH-LIFE.       87 

dust.  But  the  mysterious  seed  of  spiritual  life  remains, 
and  ever  will  remain,  in  the  books  which  they  have  left. 
Millions  of  dead  souls  have  touched  them,  and  straightway 
revived  and  stood  upon  their  feet. 

Religious  books  had  been  purchased  from  time  to  time 
by  the  General  Assembly  from  its  funds  for  the  use  of  the 
poor.  But  with  the  Great  Kcvival  this  duty  puts  on  a 
form  and  activity  of  which  we  see  little  trace  in  its  previous 
history.  In  1801  and  '2,  when  reports  are  poured  in  of 
extensive  regions  nearly  or  "wholly  destitute  of  the  means 
of  religious  instruction,'  the  Assembly  resolves  that  "re- 
ligious books  should  be  sent  for  gratuitous  distribution 
along  the  frontiers  of  these  States,  among  the  poorer  classes 
of  people,  to  the  blacks,  or  wherever  it  may  be  thought 
useful ;  which  books  shall  be  given  away,  or  lent,  at  the 
discretion  of  the  distributor.'  Within  a  few  years,  the 
need  of  more  system  in  the  publication  and  distribution  of 
religious  books  and  tracts,  and  the  collection  of  funds  for 
the  gratuitous  part  of  the  work,  led  Dr.  A.  Alexander  and 
others  to  organize  what  was  possibly  "the  primitive  Tract 
Society;1'  and  the  celebrated  physician,  Dr.  Benjamin 
Hush,  in  1808,  took  the  lead  there  in  planting  the  "Phila- 
delphia Bible  Society,' '  "the  oldest  in  the  hemisphere." 
[Life  of  Dr.  A.  Alexander.) 

The  want  of  books,  and  the  anxiety  of  the  people  to  hear 
of  the  wonderful  tidings  of  the  spread  and  power  of  the 
gospel,  produced  several  monthly  religious  magazines,  such 
as  "The  New  York  Missionary  Magazine,'  "The  Con- 
necticut Missionary  Magazine,'  "The  Christian  Remem- 
brancer,'   at  Philadelphia,  and   "The  Western  Mission- 


88  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

ary  Magazine,"  at  Washington,  Penna.,  whence  are  drawn 
most  of  the  precious  narratives  of  God's  doings  at  this 
period.     These  led  the  way  to  our  Church  periodicals. 

The  present  form  of  the  Board  of  Publication  is  the  com- 
bination, since  the  reunion,  of  the  organs  which  were  estab- 
lished by  the  two  branches  of  the  Church  subsequent  to 
their  separation — the  Board  in  1838,  the  Permanent  Com- 
mittee in  1852.  The  body  of  Presbyterian  literature  which 
it  circulates,  through  its  colporteurs,  over  all  the  land,  is  a 
perpetual  refreshment  of  the  faith  and  zeal  of  the  Church 
by  the  teachings  of  the  living  and  the  record  of  what  our 
fathers  have  believed  and  wrought  through  God  ;  thus  its 
work  is  a  great  preparation  of  the  Church,  and  of  tens  of 
thousands  without  her  pale,  for  the  more  glorious  days 
which  are  coming. 

The  general  organizations  under  the  care  of  the  General 
Assembly,  the  "Board  of  Church  Erection/'  and  the 
"  Committee  on  Freedmen,'  are  branches  of  work  for- 
merly included  within  the  sphere  of  Home  or  Domestic 
Missions,  but  which,  from  their  great  importance  and  the 
distinctness  of  their  objects,  have  now  been  appointed  to 
separate  representative  commissions.  The  "Belief  Fund 
for  Disabled  Ministers  and  the  Widows  and  Orphans  of 
Deceased  Ministers"  is  a  newer  outgrowth  of  our  evangel- 
istic spirit.  The  more  active  and  widespread  a  war,  the 
greater  necessity  for  hospitals  and  provision  for  the  disabled 
soldiers  and  those  who  suifer  through  them. 

A  general  survey  of  the  Bevival  of  1800  leaves  the  im- 
pression that,  beyond  the  purpose  of  mercy  to  that  genera- 
tion, there  may  be  traced  in  it  a  special  design  of  the  al- 


ITS    EFFECTS    UPON    OUB   CHUHCII-LIFE.       89 

might}'  Head  of  the  Church ;  that  is,  the  organization  of 
Protestantism  for  the  evangelistic  efforts  of  this  age.  We 
have  seen  this  in  Great  Britain,  Germany,  Holland  and  the 
United  States.  The  history  of  our  Presbyterian  Church  in 
this  country,  which  we  have  been  considering,  remarkably 
illustrates  it. 


CHAPTER    X. 

THE  SIGNS  OF  A  NEW  ORDER   OF  HUMAN  AFFAIRS. 

~\T7E  have  taken  a  rapid  glance  at  the  Great  Revival 
epoch  in  which  the  Church  of  Christ  was  lifted, 
with  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  to  a  much 
higher  plane  of  spiritual  life  and  energy. 

We  would  not  attach  a  vital  importance  to  the  regularity 
of  the  cycles  in  which  the  history  of  redemption  often  runs. 
But  an  inspired  writer  has  thought  fit  to  introduce  the  life 
of  Jesus  Christ  with  the  observation  that  ' '  all  the  genera- 
tions from  Abraham  to  David  are  fourteen  generations,  and 
from  David  until  the  carrying  away  into  Babylon  are  four- 
teen generations,  and  from  the  carrying  away  into  Babylon 
unto  Christ  are  fourteen  generations. ' ' 

It  pleased  God  to  stamp  seven  as  a  symbolic  number 
upon  many  ordinances,  divisions  of  time,  and  multiples  of 
things  which  are  more  or  less  related  to  the  sanctifying 
and  peace-giving  operations  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  He  ap- 
pointed seventy  as  the  definite  and  significant  number  of 
the  judges  of  his  people  ;  of  the  years  of  their  chastisement 
for  disloyalty  to  their  Sabbath  duties ;  of  the  subsequent 
weeks  of  years  until  the  Messiah  should  come ;  and  of 
the  messengers  next  the  apostles  in  rank  whom  he  sent  to 

proclaim  the  gospel  of  peace.     We  simply  do  not  under- 

90 


A    NEW    OKDEH   OF    HUMAN    AFFAIRS.         91 

st  ind  in  this  terrestrial  state  what  this  spiritual  astronomy 
means.  It  is  too  high  for  us.  But  we  may  notice  that 
there  is  a  similar  periodicity  in  the  grand  revivals  of 
modern  Christianity,  dating  from  Luther  at  Leipzic  and 
the  Diet  of  Worms,  in  1519  to  1521.  The  close  of  the  cen- 
tury witnessed  the  prosperity  of  Protestantism  in  France 
under  the  Huguenot  king,  Henry  IV.,  and  the  first  colo- 
nization of  this  New  World  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh.  Then 
we  have,  in  the  series,  the  triumphs  of  spiritual  religion 
under  the  protectorates  of  the  Cromwells,  ending  in  16G0 ; 
the  ''Great  Awakening  "  of  1730;  and  the  Great  Revival  of 
1800.  We  seem  to  have  reached  another  of  these  eras.  We 
behold  another  act  of  the  testimony  to  alternate  generations. 
We  appear  to  be  entering  upon  another  and  higher  and 
swifter  stage  of  the  career  of  the  gospel  of  salvation. 

But  in  the  cycles  of  the  Sun  of  Righteousness,  and  at 
least  the  earthly  system  which  revolves  about  him,  there 
u  another  and  far  grander  significance  to  be  imputed  to 
the  period  in  which  we  live.  It  is  one  of  the  most  ancient 
and  firm  beliefs  of  large  sections  of  the  human  race,  Chris- 
tian, Jewish  and  Mohammedan,  indications  of  which  may 
be  traced  even  among  heathen  nations,  that,  as  a  thousand 
years  with  the  Lord  is  as  one  day,  so  the  history  of  the 
world  is  marked  by  the  sabbatic  seal  upon  its  greatest 
cycles,  that  each  thousand  years  is  a  day,  the  week  of  which 
will  be  terminated  by  a  glorious  "rest,"  a  "  millennium  " 
of  holiness  and  peace,  an  earthly  "  sabbatism  '  which  will 
breathe  its  spirit  over  the  entire  race  of  man,  and  bring  the 
world  into  a  new  and  closer  intercourse  with  God  and 
heaven.     It  has  been  the  expectation  that  the  later  genera- 


92 


THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800^ 


tions  of  the  present  thousand  years  would  behold  the  grand 
preparations  and  renovations  which  would  introduce  that 
happy  period. 

Could  the  twelve  apostles  of  the  Lord  Jesus  be  sum- 
moned back,  as  were  the  great  lawgiver  and  the  great 
prophet,  to  the  scene  of  the  manifestation  of  the  glory  of 
their  Master,  and  lifted  to  take  a  general  survey  of  the  prep- 
aration of  the  nations  of  the  world  for  the  gospel  at  this 
time,  they  would  see  that  it  finds  nothing  equal  to  it  since 
their  own  wonderful  and  culminating  era.  The  empire  of 
Japan,  abolishing  the  ancient  idolatry  of  Buddhism  by  law 
and  bursting  forth  into  a  mighty  entreating  cry  for  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  light;  China,  queen  among  nations, 
hoary,  humiliated,  bruised  with  blows  and  draggled  behind 
the  chariot  of  rude  and  avaricious  foreign  conquerors,  ready 
to  yield  any  demand  to  save  her  life,  and  throwing  open 
the  gates  of  a  thousand  cities  to  the  preachers  of  a  new  and 
dreaded  doctrine ;  India,  revolutionized  since  the  terrible 
Sepoy  rebellion,  penetrated  with  five  thousand  miles  of 
railroad,  her  deified  Ganges  compelled  to  scatter  its  waters 
to  irrigate  and  give  life  to  once  barren  wastes,  the  reve- 
nues of  her  temples  forfeited,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  her 
sons  rejecting  the  decrepit  wisdom  and  the  complicated 
creeds  of  their  fathers ;  the  shah  and  court  of  Persia  put- 
ting off  beard  and  turban  and  robes,  wearing  European 
dress  and  conforming  to  Western  ideas;  Egypt  spanned 
by  railroads ;  Ethiopia  explored  by  Christian  missionaries ; 
miracles  of  salvation  wrought  in  Madagascar  ;  Russia  rising 
through  the  peaceful  and  voluntary  emancipation  of  her 
serfs ;  Spain,  Austria,  Italy  and  France  breaking  the  heavy 


A   NEW   ORDER   OF   HUMAN   AFFAIRS.         93 

chains  of  a  thousand  years  of  despotic  papal  rule,  and  ad- 
mitting freedom  of  conscience  and  of  public  worship,  with 
all  the  liberalizing  influences  of  Protestantism  in  their  train ; 
slavery  abolished  in  America ;  civilization  and  the  gospel 
reaching  the  "going  down  of  the  sun"  on  its  Western 
shores,  and  the  commingling  there  of  the  ancient  races  of 
the  East  with  ours ;  the  globe  netted  over  with  railroads 
and  telegraphs  and  lines  of  steamers ;  the  tens  of  millions 
of  books ;  the  hundreds  of  millions  of  newspapers ;  the 
Bible  translated  into  every  important  language ;  Christian 
hospitals,  Christian  schools,  Christian  printing  presses, 
Christian  commercial  and  literary  and  social  influences 
penetrating  and  leavening  all  heathen,  Mohammedan  and 
anti-Christian  lands.  Above  all,  the  prophecies  of  God's 
word  fulfilled  in  the  destruction  of  the  temporal  power  of 
the  Roman  anti-Christ;  the  hopeless  abasement  of  the 
Mohammedan  false  prophet;  and  the  supremacy  of  the 
nations  which  were  the  seat  of  the  Great  Reformation 
three  centuries  ago,  in  positions  whence  they  may  control 
the  future  destinies  of  mankind.  We  seem  to  be  fairly 
merging  into  the  full  sunrise  of  a  new  order  of  human 
affairs.  The  state  of  the  world  reminds  us  of  that  when  it 
advanced  from  the  planetary  and  prophetic  but  unsatisfy- 
ing light  of  Judaism  into  the  cloudy  twilight  of  the  past 
two  thousand  years.  Now  the  clear  sunlight  begins  to 
dawn  over  the  hills.  What  Christianity  truly  is,  and  what 
it  can  do  to  bless  mankind,  now  begins  fully  to  appear  be- 
fore all  the  world. 

It  seems  to  be  in  accordance  with  truth  for  us  to  assert 
that  in  the  condition  of  mankind  there  has  never  been  any- 


94  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF   1800. 

thing  to  compare  with  what  now  exists  since  that  "fullness 
of  times  "  when  Jesus  came  to  make  atonement.  Then  he 
came  as  Priest.  Now  he  manifestly  prepares  to  come  as 
King.  The  Father  was  glorified  then  by  his  obedience  to 
the  law.  The  Father  shall  be  glorified  now  by  the  success 
of  the  word  which  he  gave,  and  in  that  the  disciples  bear 
much  fruit.  The  Spirit  was  manifested  then  in  a  ministra- 
tion of  forms.  The  Spirit  is  to  be  manifested  now  in  a 
ministration  of  glory;  he  leads  the  sons  of  God  into  all 
truth  ;  he  lavishes  upon  them  the  fullness  and  riches  of  his 
heavenly  gifts.  Such  is  the  resemblance,  and  the  contrast, 
of  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  present  order  of  things 
in  the  kingdom  of  God. 

Thus  we  are  irresistibly  led  to  overlook  all  the  interme- 
diate advances  and  lapses  of  Christianity,  and  to  connect 
the  glorious  promise  of  its  beginning  with  the  prophecies  of 
what  it  shall  be  when  it  fairly  girds  up  its  loins  and  starts 
upon  its  unrestrained  career.  The  past  revivals  have  been 
but  the  troubled  movements,  the  inarticulate  sighs,  of  a 
Church  which  now  wakes  up  and  puts  on  her  beautiful 
garments,  and  prepares,  with  all  her  queenly  train,  to  meet 
her  Lord. 

The  interpreters  of  God's  word  point  to  many  signs  of 
the  approach  of  "the  latter  days."  "  Many  run  to  and 
fro,"  the  world  is  traversed  by  multitudes  as  it  never  was 
before,  who  crowd  the  means  of  universal  communication  ; 
"and  knowledge  is  increased,"  multiplied,  popularized, 
cheapened,  and  given  to  the  poor  and  the  laboring  classes 
by  numerous  forms  of  the  publication  of  it,  and  by  national 
and  other  systems  and  methods  of  education  of  the  young. 


A    NEW    ORDER   OF    HUMAN    AFFAIRS.  95 

There  do  "come  in  the  last  days  scoffers  walking  after  their 
own  lusts.'  The  prophetic  term  of  the  papal  superstition 
seems  to  have  expired.  The  Waldensian  witnesses  have 
come  down  from  their  wilderness,  and  again  lifted  up  their 
testimony.  The  angels  of  chastisement  go  forth  again  in 
wars,  conflagrations,  pestilences,  famines.  The  gospel  of 
the  kingdom  is  preached  to  all  the  world.  By  such  signs 
this  seems  to  be  linked  peculiarly  with  the  apostolic  era  of 
Christianity. 

If  this  general  sentiment  of  Christians,  and  indeed  of 
mankind,  be  correct,  then  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  is 
called  to  rouse  herself  to  put  on  the  spirit  and  meet  the 
duties  of  the  occasion.  And  especially  is  she  required  to 
go  to  the  inspired  account  of  the  beginning  of  the  course 
of  the  gospel ;  to  study  the  teachings,  character,  toils, 
events,  of  that  period  of  mighty  evangelic  success ;  and 
to  pray  and  labor  with  the  expectation  that  all  its  wonders 
will  be  tenfold  multiplied  in  the  world-wide  closing  scenes 
of  this  Dispensation,  preparatory  to  a  holier  and  happier 
state  of  the  world. 


CHAPTER    XI. 

THE  LATTER  PENTECOST. 

rPHE  climate  of  Palestine  supplies  one  of  the  most  plain 
and  apposite  illustrations  of  the  method  of  the  operations 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  After  a  long  and  torrid  summer,  in 
which  no  rain  falls  from  the  unclouded  sky,  and  vegetation 
is  lifeless  through  the  extreme  and  unbroken  heat,  as 
in  our  Atlantic  regions  in  the  winter  from  the  opposite 
cause,  about  November  "the  former  rains'  set  in.  For 
some  weeks,  through  the  seed  time,  there  are  plentiful  and 
reviving  showers.  All  nature  puts  on  fresh  beauty.  Flow- 
ers, grasses  and  the  whole  vegetable  world  start  with  new 
life.  But  after  a  time  the  periodic  supply  seems  to  be 
effected,  and  the  rains  almost  cease.  For  two  or  three 
months  there  descend  but  light  and  temporary  showers. 
But  when  spring  sets  fairly  in,  and  nature  feels  a  further 
general  necessity,  when  the  swelling  seed  of  a  thousand 
hills  and  valleys  needs  new  and  bountiful  gifts  of  moisture 
to  enable  it  to  fill,  and  multiply,  and  enrich  the  earth  with 
the  final  and  useful  products,  then  the  heavens  are  again 
opened  ;  then  descends  the  copious  "latter  rain  ;"  it  is  the 
grand  preparation  for  the  harvest. 

"  Ask  ye  of  the  Lord  rain  in  the  time  of  the  latter  rain  ; 

so  the  Lord  shall  make  bright  clouds,  and  give  them  show- 
96 


THE   LATTER    PENTECOST.  97 

ors  of  rain,  to  every  one  grass  in  the  field/'  The  prophet 
Zechariah  takes  the  wonderful  illustration  from  the  laws  of 
the  descent  of  rain  in  that  climate,  and  uses  it  to  tell  ws,  in 
'  the  latter  day,'  our  duty.  Dr.  E.  Henderson  (Commen- 
tary on  the  Minor  Prophets)  thus  translates  the  verse : 

"Ask  ye  from  Jehovah  rain  in  the  time  of  the  latter  rain  : 
Jehovah  maketh  the  lightnings, 
And  giveth  them  the  heavy  rain, 
To  every  one  grass  in  the  field." 

Zechariah  is  the  Isaiah  of  "the  minor  prophets;"  full 
of  the  most  evangelical,  distinct  and  far-reaching  predic- 
tions. In  a  passage  in  the  ninth  and  tenth  chapters  we 
read  first  the  cry  :  "Rejoice  greatly,  0  daughter  of  Zion  ; 
shout,  0  daughter  of  Jerusalem  :  behold  thy  King  cometh 
unto  thee ;  he  is  just  and  having  salvation  ;  lowly,  and 
riding  upon  an  ass,  and  upon  a  colt  the  foal  of  an  ass.  .  .  . 
He  shall  speak  peace  unto  the  heathen  ;  and  his  dominion 
shall  be  from  sea  to  sea,  and  from  the  river  to  the  ends  of 
the  earth,'  A  little  farther  on  is  the  promise  before 
quoted. 

This  most  striking  prophecy  is  kindred  with  a  group 
found  in  both  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  which  declare 
that  there  shall  be  a  great  outpouring  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
glorifying  the  third  person  of  the  Trinity  by  an  overwhelm- 
ing manifestation  of  his  attributes  at  the  close  of  this  Dis- 
pensation, and  before  the  millennium ;  just  as  the  second 
person  of  the  Trinity  was  glorified  by  a  manifestation  of 
himself  at  the  close  of  the  last  Dispensation,  and  as  the  in- 
troduction to  this  one.     The  passage  depicts  the  period  of 

this  Divine  manifestation  ;  the  reviving  influence  of  it  upon 

7 


98  THE   GREAT    REVIVAL   OF    1S00. 

the  world  ;  the  tempestuous  and  startling  judgments  which 
shall  be  sent  upon  the  nations,  the  lightnings  which  shall 
precede  and  accompany  the  rains ;  and  the  great  abundance 
of  the  converts,  which  is  often  in  Scripture  compared  to 
that  of  the  blades  of  grass  in  the  fields.  On  the  other 
hand,  man's  part,  in  the  use  of  the  ordained  means,  is 
made  prominent  and  essential :  the  Church  must  "ask"  for 
these  wondrous  gifts.  In  a  similar  prediction  in  the  book 
of  Ezekiel  it  is  written :  "Thus  saith  the  Lord  God,  I 
will  yet  for  this  be  inquired  of  by  the  house  of  Israel,  to  do 
it  for  them ;  I  will  increase  them  with  men  like  a  flock.' 

And  it  is  a  matter  of  the  very  first  importance  that  we 
shall  study,  ponder,  pray  over,  this  declaration  of  the 
eternal  and  omnipotent  God  until  we  are  deeply  convinced 
and  affected  with  the  sense  that  they  relate  to  us,  that  they 
point  to  oar  age,  that  they  define  our  duty.  God,  by  his 
Holy  Spirit,  will  give  unto  us,  if  asked,  this  deep  and  real- 
izing conviction.  This  will  be  to  us  the  spring  of  confi- 
dence, of  exertion,  of  patience,  of  supplication  and  of  joy. 

The  word  "ask"  is  not,  in  the  Hebrew,  simply  to  re- 
quest. It  is  the  reverential  supplication  of  the  queen  of 
Sheba  when  she  asked  counsel  and  instruction  of  King 
Solomon ;  the  passionate  entreaty  of  Hannah  when  she 
asked  a  son  from  the  Lord  ;  the  anxious  prayer  of  Solomon 
when  he  asked  wisdom  as  the  highest  gift  God  could  be- 
stow upon  a  youthful  sovereign ;  the  begging  of  a  person 
for  bread  to  keep  him  from  perishing,  or  the  supreme 
duty  which  God  requires  of  man*  Our  duty  is  to  ask,  to 
pray,  to  beg.  Let  us  inquire  how  the  primitive  Christians 
prayed,  to  receive  such  amazing  gifts  as  those  of  Pentecost. 


THE    LATTER    PENTECOST.  99 

The  first  impression  which  we  receive  from  the  study  of 
the  closing  scenes  of  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  that  of 
the  spirit  of  the  disciples,  is  that  they  were  intensely  af- 
fected ivith  the  dreadful  and  desperate  state  of  men  icith- 
ovt  Christ. 

Jesus'  tears  over  Jerusalem  had  moved  their  inmost 
soul.  "If  thou  hadst  known,  even  thou,  at  least  in  this 
thy  day,  the  things  which  belong  to  thy  peace !  but  now 
they  are  hid  from  thine  eyes.  For  the  days  shall  come 
upon  thee  that  thine  enemies  shall  cast  a  trench  about 
thee,  and  compass  thee  round,  and  keep  thee  in  on  every 
side,  and  shall  lay  thee  even  with  the  ground,  and  thy 
children  within  thee ;  and  they  shall  not  leave  in  thee  one 
stone  upon  another ;  because  thou  knowest  not  the  time 
of  thy  visitation.'  It  is  probably  be}rond  our  power  to 
conceive  of  the  passionate  love  of  the  Jew  for  Jerusalem, 
the  seat  of  ten  thousand  wondrous  records  and  legends  of 
God's  favors  to  his  race,  from  Abraham's  day  till  Christ's; 
of  saintly  characters  which  were  to  those  of  the  rest  of  the 
world  what  a  planet  is  to  an  earthen  lamp ;  of  amazing 
national  deliverances  by  Divine  and  by  angelic  hands ;  of 
promised  glory  to  Israel  by  the  incarnation,  in  their  stock, 
of  the  Son  of  God  ;  of  a  looked-for  kingdom  which  should 
surpass  any  earthly  dominion  by  as  much  as  God  is  greater, 
mightier,  wiser,  richer,  than  man.  Now,  with  the  terrific 
denunciations  of  Jesus  upon  the  people,  the  awful  woes 
which  hung  over  the  city  and  land,  so  painfully  described, 
as  to  their  fulfillment,  by  Joscphus — the  fatal  hemming  in 
by  the  implacable  Roman  hosts,  the  eating  of  their  own 
babes  in  the  extremities  of  famine,  the  ferocious  feuds  and 


100  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

bloodshed  within  the  walls,  the  rivers  of  blood  poured 
down  the  declivities  and  into  the  brooks  when  the  city  was 
taken,  the  burning  and  complete  destruction  of  the  city 
and  temple,  the  pitiless  sweeping  away  of  all  classes  and 
ranks  into  distant  and  hopeless  slavery — all  before  the  eyes, 
the  ears,  the  imaginations,  the  hearts,  of  these  fervent 
preachers  of  salvation,  who  can  realize  the  anguish  of 
their  prayers  for  themselves,  their  kindred  and  their 
countrymen?  Who  can  feel  as  they  did  the  crushing 
force  of  that  damning  charge,  the  murder  of  their  own 
Messiah,  which  they  hurled  at  the  people  of  Jerusalem  ? 
"Hill  ye  have  taken,  and  by  wicked  hands  have  crucified 
and  slain. "  "Ye  denied  the  Holy  One  and  the  Just,  and 
desired  a  murderer  to  be  granted  unto  you ;  and  killed  the 
Prince  of  Life,  wThom  God  hath  raised  from  the  dead.' 

A  look  of  Jesus  sent  the  conscience-stricken  Peter  out  to 
"  weep  bitterly.' '  What  must  have  been  the  bitterness  of 
the  weeping,  the  agony  of  the  acknowledgments,  the  in- 
tensity of  the  entreaties  for  mercy  upon  those  who  had 
"pierced  him,"  which  filled  that  upper  chamber  during 
the  days  which  intervened  between  the  distressing  scene 
when  the  disciples  stood  "gazing  up  into  heaven"  after 
their  departed  Lord,  and  that  when  the  Holy  Ghost  was 
given  in  fulfillment  of  his  last  promise,  and  they  were 
clothed  with  unknown  power  as  preachers  of  the  new  doc- 
trines ! 

To  conceive  and  to  feel  something  of  the  present  and 
the  eternal  woes  of  those  who  reject  the  Son  of  God,  who 
"pierce  him,"  who  "crucify  him  afresh,"  to  pray  with 
genuine  sincerity  of  desire  and  entreaty  for  their  deliver- 


THE    LATTER   PENTECOST.  101 

ance  and  pardon, — this  is  the  first  step  towards  our  moving 
Jesus  to  send  down  the  gifts  of  the  first  Penteeost.  We 
can  scarcely  hope  for  "the  heavy  rains"  of  the  time  of  the 
''latter  rain"  until  Christians  are  affected  to  pray  for  the 
pardon  of  their  own  guilt,  and  for  the  rescue  from  eternal 
damnation  of  their  ungodly  kindred,  their  unconverted  fel- 
low-citizens, and  the  countless  millions  of  the  world  lying 
in  sin,  with  somewhat  of  the  depth  of  emotion  and 
urgency  of  supplication  which  at  the  first  Pentecost  so 
mightily  moved  the  heart  of  God,  and  opened  so  wide  the 
windows  of  heaven. 

It  was  the  deep  conviction  of  these  things  w7hich  gave 
power  to  the  preaching  of  the  Great  Revival  of  1800.  The 
reader  of  this  account  of  it  must  have  felt  it  in  the  words 
which  the  preachers  have  left  on  record ;  and  their  daily 
labors  "from  house  to  house,"  like  the  primitive  Chris- 
tians, were  in  the  same  spirit.  The  Rev.  Samuel  Andrews 
(Historical  Collections)  says  of  Rev.  S.  C.  Caldwell,  of 
North  Carolina,  "He  pungently  presented  the  truths  of 
the  gospel  and  delineated  the  character  of  saints  and  sin- 
ners with  close  application  to  every  man's  conscience,  and 
before  he  dismissed  the  congregation  he  besought  them 
again  to  attend  to  the  things  which  belonged  to  their  ever- 
lasting peace.  While  he  spoke  the  tears  frequently  rolled 
down  his  cheeks.  He  also  exhorted  families  and  conversed 
with  individuals  about  their  eternal  interests." 

The  second  strong  impression  which  we  receive  from  a 
study  of  the  scenes  at  and  after  Pentecost  is,  the  adoiing 
honor,  the  implicit  faith,  the  joyful  love  of  those  Christians 
toward  Jesus   Christ.     "They  worshiped  him,  and  were 


102  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

continually  in  the  temple  praising  and  blessing  God." 
Study  this  wonderful  picture:  "They  lifted  up  their 
voice  with  one  accord,  and  said,  '  Lord,  Thou  art  God, 
which  hast  made  heaven  and  earth  and  the  sea  and  all 
that  in  them  is.  Of  a  truth,  against  Thy  holy  child  Jesus, 
whom  Thou  hast  anointed,  both  Herod  and  Pontius  Pilate 
and  the  people  of  Israel  were  gathered  together,  for  to  do 
whatever  Thy  hand  and  Thy  counsel  determined  before  to 
be  done.  And  now,  Lord,  behold  their  threatenings,  and 
grant  unto  Thy  servants  that  with  all  boldness  they  may 
speak  Thy  word,  by  stretching  out  Thy  hand  to  heal,  and 
that  signs  and  wonders  may  be  done  by  the  name  of  Thy 
holy  child  Jesus.'  And  when  they  had  prayed,  the  place 
was  shaken  where  they  were  assembled  together,  and  they 
were  all  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost. ' '  * 

What  a  linking  together,  in  their  faith,  of  the  divinity 
of  Jesus  with  all  its  attributes  and  the  humanity  with  all 
its  sympathies !  What  reliance  on  Him  who  was  made  a 
little  lower  than  the  angels,  for  the  suffering  of  death,  that 
he  might  lead  many  sons  into  glory,  but  is  now  crowned 
with  all  glory  and  honor,  and  all  things  put  in  subjection 
under  him ! 

"Adoring  angels  round  him  fall, 
In  all  their  shining  forms; 
His  sovereign  eye  looks  through  them  all, 
And  pities  mortal  worms." 

"Jesus"  was  the  great  theme  of  their  talk,  their 
thoughts,  their  preaching,  their  joy  !  "  With  great  power 
gave  the  apostles  witness  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  and 
great  grace  was  upon  them  all."     "Daily  in  the  temple, 


THE    LATTER    PENTECOST.  103 

and  in  every  house,  they  ceased  not  to  teach  and  to  preach 
JESUS  Christ,"  and  u rejoiced  that  they  were  counted 
worthy  to  suffer  shame  for  his  name."  "And  the  Lord 
added  daily  to  the  Church  such  as  should  be  saved.' 

The  theme  of  the  great  day  of  wonders,  the  special 
Pentecost,  was,  "Repent  and  be  baptized,  every  one  of  you, 
in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ,  for  the  remission  of  sins, 
and  ye  shall  receive  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  Save 
yourselves  from  this  untoward  generation.'  "And  the 
same  day  there  were  added  unto  them  about  three  thou- 
sand souls." 

0  brethren,  this  is  the  power  that  "shakes  the  place" 
where  we  assemble  for  prayer;  that  shakes  the  strongest 
fortification  which  human  pride  or  hatred,  or  Satan's 
power,  can  rear  about  the  souls  of  men ;  that  can  shake 
the  whole  world  with  fear  and  into  submission  ! 

When  Justin  Martyr  was  summoned  before  the  Roman 
prefect  and  asked  what  was  the  creed  of  himself  and  his 
associates,  he  replied,  "That  we  should  worship  the  God 
of  the  Christians,  whom  we  believe  to  have  been  from  the 
beginning  One,  the  Creator  and  Maker  of  all  things,  even 
of  all  things  seen  and  unseen,  and  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
who  was  predicted  by  the  prophets  as  the  future  Saviour 
of  mankind."  When  Polycarp  was  condemned  to  be 
burned  at  the  stake,  he  cried,  "O  true  and  faithful 
God,  I  bless  Thee !  I  glorify  Thee,  with  the  eternal  and 
heavenly  Jesus  Christ,  Thy  beloved  Son,  to  whom,  with 
Thee  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  be  glory  now  and  for  ever." 
This  faith  was  the  power  that  overwhelmed  the  Roman 
empire,  that  converted  millions  over  the  whole  world. 


104  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

It  was  the  name  of  Jesus  that  shook  all  the  world  at  the 
Great  Reformation.  "In  my  heart. "  said  Martin  Luther, 
"  this  article  reigns  alone,  and  shall  reign,  namely,  faith  in 
my  dear  Lord  Christ,  who  is  the  only  Beginning,  Middle 
and  End  of  all  my  spiritual  and  divine  thoughts  which  I 
have  by  day  or  night.'  And  again:  "Ah,  how  truly 
grand  is  the  honest  prayer  of  a  true  Christian !  How 
mighty  it  is  with  God,  that  a  poor  human  creature  can  so 
speak  with  the  High  Majesty  in  heaven,  and  not  dread 
Him,  but  know  that  God  is  kindly  smiling  on  him,  for 
Jesus  Christ's  sake,  His  dear  Son,  our  Lord  and  Sa- 
viour!"    This  was  also  the  spirit  of  Zwingle  and  Calvin. 

Would  we  again  shake  the  world,  it  must  be  by  the 
power  of  Jesus  Christ  ;  by  preaching  Jesus  Christ,  his 
complete  and  finished  atonement,  his  all-sufficient  interces- 
sion, the  efficacy  of  his  word,  the  honor  of  his  kingdom  on 
earth,  the  joys  of  his  kingdom  on  high  ;  and  by  praying  to 
Jesus  Christ  that  he  would  send  the  Holy  Spirit  to 
convince  all  the  world  of  sin,  of  righteousness  and  of  judg- 
ment, according  to  the  eternal  covenants  of  mercy. 

Where  shall  wejind  help  ?  Not  from  any  arm  of  flesh. 
Among  the  African  races,  as  indeed  among  most  of  the 
heathen,  there  is  a  class  of  "rain-doctors"  who,  in  a  pro- 
tracted drought,  are  employed  to  excite  the  heavens  and 
bring  down  the  precious  showers.  They  erect  a  stage  and 
make  incantations,  bowlings,  drummings,  hideous  contor- 
tions. They  burn  clouds  of  incense  and  offer  sacrifices. 
And  they  and  their  followers  believe  that  their  efforts  pos- 
sess some  efficacy.  Just  such  thero  were  among  the 
heathen  nations  about  Palestine.     The  Scriptures  often  al- 


THE    LATTER    PENTEC08T.  105 

lude  to  theni.  But  who  alone  can  send  rain  ?  '  Let  us  now 
fear  the  Lord  our  God  that  giveth  rain,  both  the  former 
and  the  latter,  in  his  season.''  How  are  we  to  obtain  it 
from  God?  Not  by  our  own  efforts.  Not  by  the  juggling 
of  professional  revivalists.  "Ask  of  the  Lord  rain,  in  the 
time  of  the  latter  rain,  so  the  Lord  shall  send  lightnings 
and  give  them  [heavy]  showers  of  rain,  to  every  one  grass 
in  the  field.''  u  Elijah  was  a  man  subject  to  like  passions 
as  we  are,  and  he  prayed  earnestly  that  it  might  not  rain, 
and  it  rained  not  on  the  earth  by  the  space  of  three  years 
and  six  months.  And  he  prayed  again,  and  the  heaven 
gave  rain,  and  the  earth  brought  forth  her  fruit.' 

Prayer  is  the  only  power  that  can  rend  the  heavens ! 
Secret  prayer — with  a  shut  closet  door,  to  him  who  has 
covenanted  to  reward  us  openly.  Family  prayer — u  every 
family  apart,  and  their  wives  apart,"  as  Zechariah  in- 
structs us ;  and  how  God  is  waking  up  our  wives  and  sisters 
and  daughters  to  pray  now,  as  if  an  earnest  of  his  blessing ! 
General  prayer — that  "the  land  shall  mourn;"  prayer  in 
the  house  of  God,  prayer  in  our  presbyteries,  synods  and  as- 
semblies, conventions  of  ministers  and  of  elders  for  prayer, 
general  days  of  fasting  and  prayer,  weeks  of  prayer. 

Will  not  the  Lord  Jesus,  the  same  almighty  Head  of 
the  body,  the  Church,  who  is  before  all  things,  and  by 
whom  all  things  consist,  answer  sincere,  believing  prayer  ? 
— He  who  says  reproachfully  to  us,  "hitherto  ye  have 
asked  nothing  in  my  name ;  aslc  and  ye  shall  receive, 
that  your  joy  may  be  full — that  the  Father  may  be  glorified 
in  the  Son.'  Once  the  disciples  were  in  peril,  their  ship 
seemed  about  to  sink  with  the  roaring  and  dashing  waves. 


106  THE   GKEAT    REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

And  they  came  to  him,  and  awoke  him,  saying,  Lord,  save 
us,  we  perish  !  And  he  saith  unto  them,  Why  are  ye  fear- 
ful, O  ye  of  little  faith  ?  Then  he  arose,  and  rebuked  the 
winds  and  the  sea,  and  there  was  a  great  calm.  And  the 
men  marveled,  saying,  What  manner  of  man  is  this,  that 
even  the  winds  and  the  sea  obey  him  !  Let  us,  fellow  dis- 
ciples, set  ourselves  to  ivaJce  him.  The  winds,  the  clouds, 
shall  obey  him  ! 

A  third  leading  feature  of  the  Pentecostal  epoch  was 
that  the  converts  seemed  so  wholly  filled  with  the  temper 
and  spirit  which  might  be  expected  to  possess  "  children  of 
God:1 

When  we  read  the  history  of  a  great  sovereign  we  expect 
to  find  that  his  virtues  have  been  transmitted  by  nature, 
by  his  precepts  and  by  his  illustrious  example,  to  his  sons 
and  daughters.  We  are  greatly  disappointed  if  we  learn 
that  the  family  of  such  a  king  were  self-indulgent,  sensual, 
cowardly,  avaricious,  and  that  their  conduct  dimmed  the 
glory  of  their  paternal  name. 

In  the  revelations  which  God  has  made  of  himself  in  his 
word  we  learn  of  the  infinite  excellence  of  all  his  moral 
attributes.  It  is  in  accordance  with  reason  to  expect  that 
when  he  adopts  "children  '  they  shall  catch  from  his  word 
and  by  the  promised  influences  of  his  Holy  Spirit  upon  the 
soul  such  goodness,  benevolence,  purity,  justice  and  other 
heavenly  traits  as  shall  make  them  shine  in  this  world  of 
sin  like  a  different  order  of  beings,  almost  as  it  were  angels 
in  disguise. 

Such  were  the  first  converts  of  Christianity.  They  were 
all  sinful  by  nature  and  imperfect ;  some  of  them  fell  into 


THE    LATTER    PENTECOST.  107 

gross  offences.  But  if  any  one  will  endeavor  to  picture  to 
his  mind  a  man  moving  among  ourselves  possessed  of  the 
virtues  of  one  of  those  primitive  Christians  best  known  to 
us — for  instance,  Paul— his  love,  patience,  generosity,  cour- 
age, devotion  to  his  Master's  work,  elevation  above  the 
motives  and  spirit  of  the  people  around  us  with  whom  we 
are  acquainted, — we  will  realize  something  of  how  greatly 
they  differed  from  us.  Few,  it  is  true,  equaled  him.  But 
still  in  him  we  see  much  of  the  prevailing  character  of  the 
first  disciples  of  Christ. 

Let  us  select  one  high  characteristic  of  those  men  and 
women.  There  is  no  sin  which  should  more  clearly  dis- 
tinguish the  world  from  the  church  than  the  love  of 
money.  Jesus  Christ  thus  marked  it:  "  Ye  cannot  serve 
God  and  mammon."  The  apostles  held  up  its  dangerous, 
subtle,  mighty  power  over  the  soul  and  over  the  conduct 
in  such  warnings  as  this :  "The  love  of  money  is  the  root 
of  all  evil."  It  is  a  sin  which  cuts  the  cords  of  dependence 
on  our  Father's  providence ;  the  ties  of  association  with 
heaven  and  its  inhabitants,  and  superiority  to  the  world ; 
and  the  strong  obligations  of  generosity  and  hospitality  to 
our  brethren  in  Christ,  and  of  gospel  liberality  in  publish- 
ing the  knowledge  of  salvation  to  all  the  world. 

How  were  the  first  converts  in  respect  to  this  sin  ?  It  is 
remarkable  that  the  inspired  historian,  in  the  Acts,  at  once 
proceeds  from  the  description  of  the  outpouring  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  upon  the  day  of  Pentecost  to  say:  "And  all 
that  believed  were  together  and  had  all  things  common, 
and  sold  their  possessions  and  goods,  and  parted  them  to 
all  men  as  every  man  had  need.     And  they  continued  daily 


108  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

with  one  accord  in  the  temple,  and  breaking  bread  from 
house  to  house,  did  eat  their  meat  with  gladness  and 
singleness  of  heart,  praising  God  and  having  favor  with  all 
the  people.  And  the  Lord  added  daily  to  the  church  such 
as  should  be  saved.'  And  the  narrative  of  another  Divine 
effusion  very  soon  afterwards  says  at  once:  "Neither  was 
there  any  among  them  that  lacked ;  for  as  many  as  were 
possessors  of  houses  or  lands  sold  them,  and  brought  the 
prices  of  the  things  that  were  sold,  and  laid  them  down  at 
the  apostles'  feet;  and  distribution  was  made  unto  every 
man  according  as  he  had  need."  Then  we  read  the  good 
example  of  the  liberality  of  Barnabas,  and  the  bad  one  of 
the  covetousness  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira,  and  their  de- 
struction, first  for  covetousness,  then  for  lying. 

Now,  if  money  be,  as  it  is,  the  equivalent,  the  representa- 
tive, the  means  of  power — the  stimulus,  present  compensa- 
tion and  support  of  all  forms  of  mechanical,  commercial 
and  other  material  and  intellectual  employments  for  the 
ends  to  which  they  are  directed — it  is  seen  in  a  moment 
why  its  consecrated  use  is  a  supreme  duty ;  and  why  its 
abuse,  by  wasting  it,  by  consuming  it  upon  our  appetites, 
or  by  laying  it  up  in  a  napkin,  and  burying  it  in  land  or 
investments,  where  it  cannot  germinate  in  good,  is  a  sin 
which  stands  near  that  which  is  unpardonable. 

When  heathen,  who  are  accustomed  to  large  outlays  for 
religious  purposes,  and  do  not  dream  that  they  "cannot 
give '  for  such  objects,  are  converted — when  they  take 
their  tone,  not  from  us  American  and  European  Christians, 
but  from  the  word  of  God,  its  teaching  and  its  examples — 
their  liberality  seems  to  the  people  of  our  day  extravagant. 


THE    LATTER    PENTECOST.  109 

Thus  I  have  seen  poor  converts  bring  in  loads  of  fruit,  vege- 
tables and  articles  of  their  own  manufacture,  on  a  missionary 
occasion.  A  ministerial  brother  in  China  mentioned  the 
case  of  a  man,  who  earned  about  six  dollars  in  a  month, 
that  usually  managed  to  bring  savings  to  the  amount  of 
one  dollar,  to  help  to  send  the  word  of  God  to  his  perishing 
fellow-countrymen.  The  sons  and  daughters  of  affliction 
are  at  times  chastened  to  something  like  the  primitive 
liberality.  A  poor  blind  girl  once  brought  to  her  pastor 
several  dollars  in  money.  He  expressed  his  surprise.  She 
replied  that  she  had  saved  it  by  laying  away  as  much 
money  as  persons  who  see  would  have  spent  for  candles. 
Thus  her  sorrow  and  darkness  were  lighted  with  the  light 
of  the  smiles  of  her  Saviour.  Our  little  children,  too,  how 
their  simple  faith  in  God,  their  readiness  to  give  freely  and 
thankfully  the  money  or  the  other  treasures  which  they  pos- 
sess, when  their  hearts  are  touched  with  some  narrative  of 
woe,  humbles  our  spiritual  self-satisfaction,  and  rebukes  our 
oversight  of  that  model  which  our  Master  placed  before  us ! 
"Jesus  called  a  little  child,  and  set  him  in  the  midst  of 
them,  and  said,  Verily  I  say  unto  3Tou,  except  ye  be  con- 
verted, and  become  as  little  children,  ye  shall  not  enter  into 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.'  Millions  of  professing  Christians 
probably  have  discovered  the  truth  of  this  declaration 
when,  dying  amidst  mourning  families,  who  had  enjoyed 
with  them  the  abundance  of  the  things  of  this  life,  they 
found  to  their  eternal  horror  the  gates  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  shut.  They  had  called  themselves  "children  of 
God;"  he  says,  "  I  never  knew  you." 

But  "  with  what  measure'    do  we  mete?    Look  at  the 


110  THE   GREAT   REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

contributions  of  many  a  congregation  in  a  substantial  farm- 
ing community.  The  annual  aggregate  of  the  gifts  of  some 
churches  for  the  spread  of  the  gospel  over  our  nation  or 
abroad,  or  to  educate  men  for  the  ministry,  or  for  the  in- 
crease "of  religious  literature,  or  to  any  of  the  other  great 
avenues  of  evangelization  which  God  has  opened  before  us, 
may  be  as  much  as  the  price  of  an  ox,  or  a  sheep,  which 
any  one  of  a  hundred  members  might  give  away,  or  lose, 
and  be  none  the  poorer.  Indeed,  many  give,  to  save  their 
fellow-men,  nothing  at  all.  Look  at  those  from  churches 
in  cities  or  towns — a  yearly  consecration  to  some  work  of 
Christ,  from  the  whole  body,  of  what  one  of  many  members 
would  spend  for  an  evening's  entertainment  and  mirth. 

When  we  consider  the  torpor  of  the  Church  to  this  and 
other  sins  of  omission  as  well  as  transgression,  we  may  wTell 
ask,  Is  it  a  wonder  that  God's  Spirit  is  withheld?  That 
our  children  grow  up  unblessed?  That  dissipation  and 
folly  prevail  in  society  ?  That  scoffers  deride  the  precious 
name  of  Christ?  That  tens  of  thousands  of  thinking  and 
moral  people  stand  aloof  from  the  Church?  That  the 
wheels  of  the  chariot  of  salvation  arc  clogged  ?  That  the 
world  is  trenched  in  its  superstition  and  unbelief?  We 
must  warn  men  to  repent  of  the  robbery  of  God,  and  bring 
the  offerings  which  they  owe,  before  he  can  "  open  the  win- 
dows of  heaven  and  pour  us  out  a  blessing." 

What  a  power  the  American  Church  would  have  for  the 
spread  of  the  gospel  if  its  members  employed  the  vast, 
varied,  inexhaustible  resources  of  this  wonderful  continent 
in  «the  service  of  Christ,  as  they  do  to  maintain  armies  and 
navies  and  the  fleets  of  commerce,  to  carry  railroads  to  the 


THE    LATTER   PENTECOST.  Ill 

extremes  of  civilization,  to  multiply  manufactures,  to  in- 
crease the  products  of  the  soil,  to  rear  edifices  for  the  mul- 
tifarious uses  and  desires  of  our  luxurious  and  extravagant 
state  of  society,  to  get  riches  that  "  bereave  the  soul  of 
good,"  and  that  are  kept  for  children  "  to  their  hurt "  ! 

Was  there  ever  an  age  in  which  such  opportunities  and 
means  were  given  to  the  Church  of  Christ  to  reach  and 
benefit  and  bless  mankind?  Was  there  ever  a  generation 
so  guilty  as  ours  in  closing  its  eyes  and  ears  to  the  despair 
of  the  perishing  immortal  beings  around  us?  Was  there 
ever  one  to  whom,  by  all  the  grand  vehicles  of  a  high  civil- 
ization, their  woes,  their  ruin,  their  terrors,  their  blind  help- 
lessness while  they  are  falling  over  the  precipices  of  eternal 
perdition,  were  so  brought  before  the  eyes,  the  ears,  the 
imagination?  Oh,  did  we  consecrate  thought,  time,  prop- 
erty, sons  and  daughters,  all  the  numerous  and  potent 
influences  of  our  day  and  land,  to  publishing  that  joyful, 
wonderful,  glorious  news,  with  anything  like  the  same  de- 
votedness  to  him  which  glowed  in  the  first  Christians,  how 
quickly  all  our  continent,  all  Asia,  all  Africa,  all  Europe, 
would  be  filled  with  the  praises  of  his  redemption  ! 

When  we  compare  the  three  great  revivals  of  American 
history,  we  may  observe  a  progression  in  their  character. 
,  The  first  was  one  of  colonization.  It  made  the  dead 
formalism  of  Europe  intolerable,  and  placed  a  renovated 
and  free  people  upon  a  new,  unoccupied  and  suitable  conti- 
nent.    This  was  the  digging  up  and  the  transfer  of  the  ore. 

The  second  was  one  of  "  awakening  "  as  it  was  well 
termed  at  the  time.  It  was  one  of  doctrinal  instruction, 
of  spiritual  quickening;  and  it  is  wonderful  how  the  holy 


112  THE   GREAT    REVIVAL   OF    1800. 

influence  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  David  Brainerd  and  others 
of  that  day  is  to  be  traced  at  the  root  of  the  revival  and 
missionary  efforts  of  all  sects  and  lands.  This  was  the 
melting  and  fining  of  the  metal. 

The  third  was  one  of  evangelic  organization.  It  girded 
and  arrayed  the  followers  of  Christ,  some  of  them  in  gen- 
eral societies,  some  of  them  in  the  establishment  of  separate 
ecclesiastical  agencies,  for  the  great  work  of  giving  the  gos- 
pel to  mankind.  T  have  shown  how  the  Boards  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church  can  be  traced  back  to  it.  iThis  was 
the  advancement  to  the  building  of  engines  and  machinerj7. 

The  fourth  must  be  one  of  dissemination.  It  must  em- 
ploy the  numerous  membership  and  the  vast  resources  of 
the  Church  in  conveying  the  knowledge  of  salvation  "to 
every  creature. ' '  This  must  supply  fuel,  kindle  the  fires, 
man  and  load  the  trains  and  vessels,  and  send  the  freights 
of  mercy  over  land  and  sea,  to  every  inhabitant  of  this  land, 
and  to  every  mortal  and  immortal  descendant  of  those  who 
were  driven  from  Eden  for  their  sin.  "  They  shall  obtain 
joy  and  gladness,  and  sorrow  and  sighing  shall  flee  away.r 

Now  again,  "  the  Icingdom  of  heaven  is  at  handF  Shall 
we  mumble  over  our  phylacteries,  cleanse  our  cups  and 
platters,  and  garnish  the  tombs  of  dead  prophets  ?  Shall 
we  hold  our  peace?  Or  shall  we  haste  with  our  best  gifts 
to  the  King  ;  wake  our  sons  and  daughters  to  proclaim 
his  approach  ;  and  sound  the  glad  tidings  to  the  meek, 
the  broken-hearted,  the  captives?  Is  the  Presbytfrian 
Church — are  we — "come  to  the  Idngdom  for  sveh  a  time 
as  this"?  Or  shall  God  destroy  us,  and  raise  up  help  from 
(mother  quarter"  f 


